When the FBI raided the home of John Bolton last week, pretty much everyone in the press and in the Democratic Party assumed that the raid constituted personal revenge on the part of President Trump, because the former national security adviser is now a harsh–some would say demented–critic of the president. But what was the raid actually about?
The raid presumably related to misuse of classified information, and the FBI took away some documents. There are at least two possible violations of the Espionage Act that could be in play: Bolton’s alleged memorializing of classified information in the form of notes that he used to write his anti-Trump book, and a report that he tried to extract classified documents during his White House service by sending them to family members.
Victor Davis Hanson has a measured assessment of what may be going on here:
As Hanson notes, the FBI got a search warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge, so they evidently made a plausible showing that Bolton’s home could contain evidence of commission of a crime.
This case will play out over time, so I will only add this: why do so many find credible the claim that Trump ordered the Bolton raid as a form of revenge? Because the Democrats’ and the federal and state agencies’ treatment of Trump was disgraceful and unprecedented. Democrats knew that by executing a high-profile search of Donald Trump’s home, as well as by bringing multiple bogus criminal prosecutions against Trump, they were sowing the wind. Now they are not surprised to find that–as they see it–they are reaping the whirlwind.
If that is all there is to the case, no one should be too surprised. But I suspect there is quite a bit more.
