U.S. President Donald Trump wears a 'Trump Was Right About Everything!' hat, as he makes an announcement on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 22, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Conservative writer Andrew C. McCarthy tells the National Review that the FBI raid of former national security adviser John Bolton is actually a raid by President Donald Trump.
McCarthy, who called the search the “retribution president’s latest lawfare sortie,” said there is no solid reason to search Bolton’s home other than to harass.
“Obviously, the Trump Justice Department, which has a growing lawfare practice of investigating Trump’s political enemies, has reopened the criminal investigation of Bolton,” said McCarthy, author of the book “Ball of Collusion,” which examines an alleged plot by Hillary Clinton to rig the 2016 election.
The raid, he said, appears to arise out of the feud over Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened” (2020), which records Bolton’s time in the Trump administration as a high-ranking advisor and depicts Trump as incompetent and unfit as president. McCarthy said Bolton’s book required a classified information review by the intelligence community of Trump’s first term, however, which both vetted and approved it without warning flags.
Still, during his first administration, after Bolton became a reliable Trump media critic, Trump sent aides to court to stop the publication of Bolton’s book, alleging that it contained classified information. However, Federal District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, denied the government’s motion to block publication, said McCarthy.
Trump’s Justice Department then opened a criminal investigation of Bolton for mishandling classified information — months before agents removed boxes of classified documents from Trump’s own home in Florida — but Biden dropped the case. Trump’s civil suit to claim Bolton’s book profits also failed.
McCarthy, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, took particular umbrage with Patel’s announcement on X during the Friday raid that “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on a mission.”
“So much for the presumption of innocence and the Justice Department’s obligation to honor the civil rights of persons under investigation,” McCarthy wrote, adding, “… President Trump is playing with fire in seeking retribution against his tormentors by using the very same lawfare tactics.”
Read the National Review report at this link.