No one is above the law.
The documents weren't at his home, but his office. That's not legally relevant. I just think that people will naturally think "home" and I'm just clarifying it's his office.
FBI agents executing a search warrant at former national security adviser John Bolton's downtown Washington office last month turned up documents marked as classified, according to a court filing released Tuesday.
A description of the documents gathered in the Aug. 22 search suggested they included materials that referenced weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. mission to the United Nations and records related to the U.S. government's strategic communications.
The inventory by an FBI agent doesn't specify the number of suspected classified documents. But it lists several collections or folders that were labeled "confidential" and some pages marked "secret." The heading on at least one set marked "confidential" was redacted from the inventory, filed earlier this month in federal court in Washington.
As was the case with Trump, Bolton had long refused to give up the classified documents when the government demanded them. (But unlike Trump, he had no presidential power to declare the documents unclassified.)
A judge warned Bolton that he may have committed a crime in publishing classified information in his anti-Trump book. The judge didn't rule that the book's publication should be stopped, reasoning that Bolton had already sent out hundreds of copies and the secrets he exposed were no longer secret.
And then Biden dropped the case against his political ally.
Both search warrant applications indicated FBI agents were seeking evidence related to three felony offenses, including gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act and retaining classified information without permission.
In Trump's first term, Bolton faced a lawsuit claiming he included classified information in a book he wrote after leaving the administration. A federal judge warned publicly that the former White House official's actions might have been criminal. However, a Justice Department probe did not lead to charges and was eventually dropped under the Biden administration in 2021.
Now watch Politico suddenly become skeptical of claims of a foreign country (most likely Russian) hacking into a Democrat's emails.
Its not known when the investigation restarted. Court filings indicate that investigators determined that Bolton�s AOL email account was hacked by a foreign entity, although details of the alleged hack and how the U.S. became aware of it remain unclear.
This newfound skepticism is deployed to help Bolton. Politico is challenging the claim that Bolton's illegal and sloppy handling of classified information but that information into the hands of RUSSIAN AGENTS.
You of course remember that whenever anyone on the right points out that there is very little evidence for the claim that RUSSIAN AGENTS hacked DNC emails to help Trump, we're accused of being AGENTS OF PUTIN.
But of course left-wingers can deny Putin's hacking all day long because there's just no way that socialist far-left extremists like "reporters" could never be accused of siding with a communist dictator. That just wouldn't make any sense!
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
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Classified material was reportedly seized from the home of John Bolton. For politicians and pundits who insisted that classified material found at Mar-a-Lago justified that raid, the goose just met the gander in the narrative surrounding the Bolton raid...
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...Sen. Adam Schiff previously supported the raid on Mar-0-Lago as necessary if there were any classified documents still in Trump's possession after leaving office. However, he denounced the raid on Bolton's home.
...I was skeptical of both raids. Ordinarily, documents have been secured and retrieved without such raids. However, any discovery of classified material comes after years of conflict over classified information with Bolton, particularly related to his book.
Below: Apparently four of the seized folders are labled "Trump I" through "Trump IV."