John Bolton, whose home and office were searched by federal agents on Friday, has been one of the most vocal critics of President Donald Trump since serving as a national security adviser in Trump’s first administration.
After serving in the White House, Bolton wrote a scathing book that portrayed Trump as grossly ill-informed about foreign policy. FBI agents’ searches of Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington office, purportedly part of an investigation into the handling of classified information, raise the question of possible future actions against critics of the Republican president who have voiced their opinions.
Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crimes, a person not authorized to discuss the investigation by name told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
Here’s more information on Bolton, a Republican and foreign policy hawk:
Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser, appointed in 2018 after Trump dismissed H.R. McMaster.
Bolton’s 17-month tenure was rife with clashes over countries including North Korea and Iran, with him voicing skepticism over Trump’s outreach toward and summit with Kim Jong Un. On Iran, Bolton backed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal but favored regime change and was frustrated when Trump called off a planned military strike in 2019.
Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation.
Bolton’s 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened,” painted an unvarnished portrait of Trump and his administration, amounting to the most vivid first-person account at the time of how Trump conducts himself in office. The 577-page book portrayed Trump as grossly ill-informed about foreign policy, with Bolton writing that the president “saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.”
Bolton wrote that while he was at the White House, Trump typically had only two intelligence briefings a week “and in most of those, he spoke at greater length than the briefers, often on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand.”
On Ukraine, Bolton alleged that Trump directly tied providing military aid to the country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, soon-to-be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family. In one conversation, Trump said “he…
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