On Friday, F.B.I. agents searched the home and office of President Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, to determine whether he illegally shared or possessed classified information. Unauthorized possession and disclosure of national defense information is indeed a crime, and anyone who engages in such acts should be prosecuted.
But the very fact that the public can’t be sure whether this is, in fact, a legitimate investigation highlights the current crisis of trust in federal law enforcement, a crisis that has been exacerbated by the words and actions of Mr. Trump and members of his administration. The F.B.I.’s history shows that public trust is easily lost and difficult to rebuild — a lesson that we may have to (re)learn.
There are reasons to believe that the investigation into Mr. Bolton is justified. According to the F.B.I., the search it executed was court-authorized. That means an F.B.I. agent would have had to submit an affidavit, under oath, that there was probable cause to believe there was evidence of a crime in the specific places to be searched. And given that two locations were searched (in two jurisdictions), the Justice Department would most likely have needed to meet this standard for both places — which most likely means it had to persuade two different magistrate judges that it met the probable cause standard.
These judicial checks, by a separate and impartial branch, should ordinarily create a presumption of regularity that the rule of law is being followed.
But these are not regular times. It’s no secret that President Trump is “not a fan” of Mr. Bolton, as he reminded the country on Friday. In fact, the president has been at odds with Mr. Bolton since his first term. (Mr. Bolton left the administration in 2019 — the president claimed he fired him; Mr. Bolton said he resigned.)
In 2020, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department opened an investigation into Mr. Bolton to find out whether he unlawfully disclosed classified information in his book, “The Room Where It Happened.” During the years Mr. Trump was out of office, Kash Patel, now head of the F.B.I., also included Mr. Bolton on a list of 60 so-called deep-state names in the appendix of his book, “Government Gangsters.”
Soon after taking office this January, Mr. Trump terminated Mr. Bolton’s security detail, despite the fact that Iran had made threats on Mr. Bolton’s life and an Iranian was charged in 2022 in a plot to assassinate him. All of this has left the public with reasonable concerns that the justice system is being weaponized to seek personal retribution on behalf of the president.
At the same time, Mr. Trump has also attempted to delegitimize other, substantially similar investigations — when they were directed at him. He and other Republicans attacked the search when the F.B.I. executed a warrant for highly classified documents at his Florida home and private club, Mar-a-Lago, in 2022, declaring it a “witch hunt” and much more. The court released the F.B.I.’s affidavit, and the public was able to read for itself the substantial evidence underlying its probable cause showing. But that case withered on the vine following a series of irregular procedural and evidentiary rulings by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, further muddying the public’s understanding of the underlying national security threat posed by the facts of that case.
Whether Mr. Bolton’s case is built on solid evidence will become clear as more facts emerge and if the Justice Department brings formal charges. (In an interview, Vice President JD Vance said the investigation was “not at all” inspired by political considerations.) But we should also consider the broader stakes for federal law enforcement. The rule of law depends as much on public perception as it does on following it in practice. Throughout our history, the F.B.I. has learned the hard way — a few times — that the American people need to believe in the legitimacy of federal law enforcement for it to be effective.
One of these incidents happened soon after the F.B.I.’s inception, when the Bureau of Investigation, as it was then known, unleashed a series of raids against suspected “radicals” in the name of national security. The Palmer Raids (named for the attorney general at the time, Mitchell Palmer) resulted in the arrest of thousands and deportation of hundreds of people, mostly immigrants, in a series of searches reminiscent of what Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing today. Public backlash followed, and J. Edgar Hoover was later appointed director with a mandate to clean up the bureau’s image. His ability to accomplish that — through a combination of good P.R. and political savvy under eight presidents of both parties — is what allowed the fledgling agency to gain more power and responsibilities over the ensuing decades.
That capital quickly eroded, however, following Mr. Hoover’s death. The Church hearings in Congress helped shed light on Cointelpro (for counterintelligence program), a secret operation Hoover oversaw over many years aimed against individuals in American society whom he considered “subversive,” including Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists. Internal guidelines, legislation like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and increased congressional oversight came in the years after.
But rebuilding the public’s trust took decades beyond these reforms — even today, many Americans still remember the F.B.I. primarily for abuses like these.
If the F.B.I. is seen as a tool of retribution, it will come at the expense of the F.B.I.’s effectiveness in the long run. An F.B.I. that is not perceived as legitimate will have a more difficult time gathering information and intelligence for its cases, which are often provided voluntarily by individuals who believe in its mission. Judges may be more skeptical of its investigative steps, including search warrants like the one used against Mr. Bolton, and juries may be less likely to believe agents when they take the stand, resulting in fewer convictions.
Ultimately, the F.B.I.’s very powers and jurisdiction may be reconsidered, cabined and perhaps dismantled: What Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. (Perhaps not this Congress, but a future one.)
For an administration that claims to want to make America safer, the consequences of a loss of America’s faith in federal law enforcement should not be taken lightly.
Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. special agent, is a senior lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and the author of the Substack newsletter The Freedom Academy.
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