FBI directors don’t customarily announce raids in progress. But early this morning, Kash Patel celebrated the search of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home as agents were rolling into his suburban-Maryland driveway: “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission,” Patel wrote on X. Agents also executed a search warrant at Bolton’s office in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump later told reporters that he had learned about the raid on one of his most voluble critics from TV news, but he took the opportunity to call Bolton a “lowlife” and “not a smart guy.” Then he added: “Could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”
The FBI’s actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton’s years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That’s the problem with a politicized legal system—even if an investigation is legitimate, it’s easy to assume that its motives are corrupt. Trump has spent years vowing retribution against Bolton, particularly after he published a 2020 memoir that portrayed the president as incompetent and out of his depth on foreign policy.
If this was revenge, it wasn’t an isolated act. As agents were still packing up boxes of Bolton’s effects, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had pushed out yet another senior military officer, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In June, its analysts delivered a preliminary assessment that U.S. bombers had caused relatively limited damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, undercutting Trump’s pronouncements that the sites were “obliterated.” And just three days ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked the security clearances of more than three dozen current and former national-security officials. Several played key roles in efforts to counter or expose Russia’s 2016 election interference, what Trump calls the “Russia Hoax” and Gabbard has described as part of a “years-long coup” against the president.
Put it all together and this may be remembered as the week Trump’s campaign against the “deep state” kicked into high gear. To some intelligence professionals I spoke with, it felt as though something fundamental had shifted in their historically apolitical line of work.
“Given the dystopian nature of it all—clearance revocations of former officials who did no wrong, forced retirements of long-standing intelligence officials, reductions in force that include junior officers who were just hired, and a wildly politicized leadership in the intelligence community—I no longer recommend young Americans to pursue careers in intelligence,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a veteran CIA officer who had his own security clearance yanked earlier this year, told me.
Purge doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here. Chilling effect is too mild, though revoking the security clearances of two senior intelligence officers, as Gabbard did, effectively ending their government careers, will indeed send a message. Terrorizing the workforce is a phrase I heard a lot this week. And that may indeed be the point.
“Instead of being honest about what we think, now people will just keep their mouths shut or tell Trump what he wants to hear,” said one former official, who would only speak anonymously. The administration publicly identified this person as part of the “Russia Hoax,” and they’ve hired personal security for outside their home, fearing that Trump’s most fevered supporters might pay a visit.
Forget about calling out misbehavior or wrongdoing by administration officials, the person added: “Where would we go to file a grievance, or to report misconduct? Who’s going to do that?”
Gabbard’s office did not respond to my request for comment.
One current official described the mood among career intelligence officers as “panicked.” In this person’s agency, three senior officials were abruptly placed on administrative leave this week. One of them has been involved in efforts to counter foreign threats against U.S. elections, which the administration has scaled back.
Gabbard’s actions have also raised concerns about separation of powers. She revoked the clearances of at least two congressional staffers. It will be difficult for them to perform their oversight of the executive branch without access to classified information.
Bolton was in his Washington office as the FBI conducted its search, according to a person close to him. He did not respond to a request for comment. Bolton was investigated during the first Trump administration and during the Biden administration over his book, The Room Where It Happened. He had submitted the manuscript for a prepublication review in early 2020, and after a lengthy back-and-forth with government officials, he made changes to address concerns about the possible disclosure of classified information. That effectively made it suitable for publication, according to a detailed statement from the official who led the review.
But in a highly unusual maneuver, the Trump White House ordered a second review by an administration official, who concluded that the manuscript was full of classified information. (That official, Michael Ellis, is now deputy director of the CIA.) The official in charge of the earlier review disagreed and concluded that the administration was trying to silence a political critic and was trampling his First Amendment rights.
Bolton published the book anyway. Federal investigators looked into whether he had illegally disclosed classified information. But Bolton was never charged. It’s possible some new evidence of a potential crime has emerged, leading to today’s FBI raid. But the administration’s hostility toward Bolton is well known, and Trump has made no secret of the fact that, seeing himself as the victim of political prosecutions during the Biden years, he is eager to turn the tables on perceived enemies. A senior U.S. official told the New York Post that the Biden administration had shut down the probe into Bolton “for political reasons.”
“That’s nonsense,” a former senior Justice Department official told me. “No decision in any case was ever made for political reasons. These accusations are obviously made in bad faith, and honestly, that’s what happens when you have people making decisions with basically no experience with complex national security investigations. They have no clue what they’re talking about.”
There are still officials working in the government who took part in the 2016 efforts to counter Russia. Has the White House overlooked them? Are they next on the list to be purged? Everyone is left to wonder. But no one thinks that the president’s retribution campaign is anywhere near its end.
Vivian Salama and Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed reporting.
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