Less than 12 hours after President Trump’s inauguration in January, he revoked the security detail protecting John Bolton, his former national security adviser turned critic, despite credible threats from Iran. Since then, Mr. Trump has repeatedly ridiculed Mr. Bolton on social media, including by calling him one of the “stupid people” making it harder to end the Ukraine war. The president has also continued his yearslong accusations that Mr. Bolton leaked classified information, without offering any evidence.
None of Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics stopped Mr. Bolton from pointing out the president’s many foreign policy failures. On Thursday evening, Mr. Bolton was back on CNN, saying that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had managed to “roll” Mr. Trump at their recent Alaska summit, and criticizing the administration for being unable to explain the outcome of the summit or the future of peace talks.
On Friday morning, the intimidation ratcheted up several notches. At dawn, the F.B.I. conducted a raid of Mr. Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., and his office in Washington. Agents carried out boxes of papers and put them into vehicles with flashing blue lights in front of the amassed cameras. The Times reported that officials were investigating whether Mr. Bolton had improperly leaked national security information to the news media and other parties to damage the Trump administration. Mr. Bolton, notably, has not held government office in six years.
It is too early to know what the F.B.I. will claim to find in all of those boxes, but not too early to surmise that the search for incriminating documents was not the real goal of Friday’s raid. Even if the search turns up documents that should not be there, the administration has damaged any presumption of good faith by flinging weightless accusations of criminality at those who challenge it. That approach was evident in the snide social media posts that accompanied the raid. “NO ONE is above the law,” wrote Kash Patel, the bureau’s director. “@FBI agents on mission.” Mr. Patel’s deputy Dan Bongino jumped to an accusation of guilt with his response: “Public corruption will not be tolerated.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi declared: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”
The raid is a new chapter in Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against his critics. The White House and its loyalists within the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are sending a clear message: Keep quiet, or we will use the extraordinary power of federal law enforcement to threaten your job or your liberty and put you under a lasting cloud of suspicion. And they are using the fearsome punitive authority of the government to conduct this campaign.
Mr. Trump has accused former President Barack Obama of “treason,” claiming his predecessor was behind the effort to reveal how Russia helped Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “He’s guilty,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Obama in July, acting as both judge and jury. Almost immediately the Justice Department created a task force to investigate the allegation. Jack Smith, the former special counsel who brought two federal indictments against Mr. Trump, is now under a federal investigation after Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, accused him of violating the Hatch Act.
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