In just one week, the administration has targeted dozens of its perceived critics, leaving national-security officials angry and afraid.
By Shane Harris, The Atlantic
FBI directors don’t customarily announce raids in progress. But early this morning, Kash Patel celebrated the search of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home as agents were rolling into his suburban-Maryland driveway: “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission,” Patel wrote on X. Agents also executed a search warrant at Bolton’s office in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump later told reporters that he had learned about the raid on one of his most voluble critics from TV news, but he took the opportunity to call Bolton a “lowlife” and “not a smart guy.” Then he added: “Could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”
The FBI’s actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton’s years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That’s the problem with a politicized legal system—even if an investigation is legitimate, it’s easy to assume that its motives are corrupt. Trump has spent years vowing retribution against Bolton, particularly after Bolton published a 2020 memoir that portrayed the president as incompetent and out of his depth on foreign policy.
