John Bolton: FBI search for Trump’s ex-security consultant

The US federal police FBI searches John Bolton’s house, who worked as a national security advisor in the first government of President Donald Trump. This reports several US media, including the news agency. The US boulevard newspaper had first reported.

The search takes place in connection with an investigation into dealing with secret documents, as a person familiar with the matter announced the AP on Friday. According to US media reports, the search is concerned with the question of whether Bolton illegally owned or passed on. However, there was initially no official information on the background of the search.

After the search started in Bolton’s house, he was seen on Friday morning in the lobby of the Washington building, where he has an office, as he spoke to two people, on the west “FBI”, as AP continues.

Bolton was not arrested and no criminal offense was accused, as AP continues to report on the anonymous person. A journalist of the AFP news agency saw how FBI agents entered Bolton’s house in a suburb of the capital Washington in the morning.

FBI director Kash Patel wrote on: “Nobody is above the law … @fbi agent in action.” US Justice Minister Pam Bondi: “America’s security is not negotiable. Justice will be persecuted. Always.”

From April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton was in Trump’s first term of national security advisor, later he became a sharp Trump critic.

Bolton was accused of publishing secret information in his book “The room in which everything happened”, as reported. Trump had signed a decree in January in which he accused Bolton in the book about his time as a national security advisor to have made secret information.

In “the room in which everything happened”, Bolton Trump presented as completely uninformed in foreign policy issues and wrote that he had seen “behind every stone and was amazingly uninformed about how to run the white house, let alone the huge federal government”.

During Trump’s first term, the Ministry of Justice determined Bolton for the passing on of confidential information, as the broadcaster reported. It unsuccessfully tried to prevent the publication of his memoirs and prevent him from making money. In 2021, during Joe Biden’s term, however, it was announced that the legal steps against Bolton would be stopped due to his book.

According to NBC, Bolton claimed that he had fulfilled his legal obligations by receiving confirmation from an official from the National Security Council in April 2020 that the book did not contain any secret information.

Most recently, the Bolton, known as the foreign policy hardliner, had criticized Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the US state of Alaska for the Ukraine War. In the morning of the raid, Bolton criticized Trump’s Russia policy again on X. It is unclear whether the contribution was planned beforehand.

Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly attacked Bolton sharply and insulted it personally. Shortly after the beginning of his second term in January, the president withdrew personal protection through the Secret Service to his former security advisor.

In an interview with the broadcaster ABC at the beginning of this month, Bolton answered when asked if he was worried that the government under Trump could act against him that he had already “targeted Trump” by taking his security guards away. He added: “I think this is a presidency of retaliation.”

The FBI boss Kash Patel appointed by Trump had created a so-called enemy list with Trump critics in the past. Bolton was also found on this list.

Note: This article has been updated several times.