OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
9:37 AM – Friday, August 22, 2025
FBI agents have raided the suburban home of President Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton in Bethesda, Maryland, in a security probe for classified documents.
Bolton served in Trump’s White House for 17 months, from April 2018 to September 2018, before he announced his resignation, which coincided with a tweet from Trump saying that he had fired his national security advisor.
Early on Friday, FBI agents stormed Bolton’s home and Washington, D.C. office. According to a Trump administration official, this action was taken at the direction of FBI Director Kash Patel.
The raid took place around the same time that Patel posted cryptically on X, “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.”
Officials reported that the sweep of Bolton’s house was due to a national security case involving classified documents that was initiated during Biden’s term.
Since he departed from the first Trump administration, Bolton has been a vocal critic of Trump, publishing a book in 2020 titled “The Room Where It Happened” that offers an unflattering portrayal of Trump and his foreign policy decisions.
The Justice Department (DOJ) sued Bolton in 2020 over his memoir published the same year, accusing him of a breach of contract by failing to conduct a pre-publication review of the manuscript for classified information. Trump administration officials repeatedly warned against the book, and the president repeatedly tried to stop its eventual publication. The department closed the lawsuit in 2021, leading Bolton to believe they were “just giving up,” but instead opened a criminal investigation into the potential disclosure of sensitive information in the book.
Trump removed Bolton’s security clearance on his first day back in office for his second term, accusing him of publishing classified information in his book, which Bolton has denied. Trump also revoked his Secret Service protection in February.
Bolton predicted a run-in with Patel’s FBI in January.
“I think the central characteristic Trump seems to be looking for in all of the appointees we’ve seen so far is fealty to him,” he told the Christian Science Monitor. “A lot of people say it’s loyalty. Loyalty is a virtue, it’s a good thing. That’s not what Trump wants. He wants fealty to him. He wants submissiveness. He wants yes-men and yes-women. And Kash Patel has demonstrated, in his service in Trump’s first term, that he’ll simply do whatever Trump wants.”
He went on to warn that “if there is a retribution campaign, and there certainly seems to be, [Patel] would be a central element of it. I think that’s dangerous.”
Bolton is not currently charged with any crimes, and he has not been arrested.
Trump spoke to reporters about Bolton on the morning of the raid.
“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,” the president said. “We’re going to find out.”
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