REUTERS
FBI agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, DC office of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton Friday morning in a high-profile probe of allegations that he sent “highly sensitive” classified documents to his family from a private email server while working in the White House.
Federal investigators went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post. Agents later went to Bolton’s office in downtown DC, but did not enter until a judge signed a warrant for that location late Friday morning.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,” President Trump told reporters of Bolton Friday morning. “We’re going to find out.”
Investigators reopened a dormant probe into Bolton’s alleged use of a private email to send classified national security documents to his wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in September 2019, according to a senior US official.
“While Bolton was a national security adviser, he was literally stealing classified information, utilizing his family as a cutout,” this person charged.
The probe was initially opened in 2020, and continued into the Biden administration, which froze the investigation.
Friday’s raid came at the behest of Patel, who reopened the matter after he took over the FBI in February, the senior US official said.
The president told reporters at the White House that he had no advance knowledge of the operation.
“I know nothing about it,” Trump insisted. “I just saw it this morning … I tell [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] and I tell the group: ‘I don’t want to know, but you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it.’”
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting — and I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer — but I feel that it’s better this way,” the president added.
It is not unusual for a president not to have been informed ahead of an FBI raid. Traditionally, the Justice Department has worked independently of the White House — especially on matters potentially tied to domestic politics. For example, former President Joe Biden said he was not given a heads-up about an August 2022 FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to recover national security papers sought by the National Archives.