The information that provided the basis for the warrant to search John Bolton’s home on Friday was based on intelligence collected overseas by the C.I.A., according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, provided Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, with limited access to the intelligence. It involved the mishandling of classified material by Mr. Bolton, the people said.
The search of the home and office of Mr. Bolton, who was national security adviser during President Trump’s first term, was a major escalation of a long-running inquiry into whether he collected or leaked sensitive national security information, law enforcement officials said.
The nature of the intelligence collected overseas is not known. The F.B.I. obtained the search warrant after presenting evidence to a federal judge. Mr. Bolton’s office declined to comment.
The C.I.A. and F.B.I. regularly cooperate on counterterrorism investigations. It is unusual for the C.I.A. to so prominently provide information for a high-profile investigation of a former U.S. official.
The C.I.A. is prohibited from law from collecting intelligence on Americans, a legal restriction the agency takes seriously, because of the abuses exposed by Congress’s Church Committee and other inquiries in the 1970s.
But the C.I.A. regularly collects information on foreign governments, particularly adversarial countries. When information on Americans is collected during those espionage operations, there are safeguards on who can see or review that information.
But there are procedures to share that information with law enforcement when officials believe an investigation could be warranted.
Nevertheless, the agency is sometimes reluctant to share information in legal proceedings, worried that the source of the information, or the method with which the information is gathered could be exposed.
Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Patel have a good working relationship, administration officials have said. Mr. Ratcliffe joined the House Intelligence Committee after he was elected to Congress. Mr. Patel worked on the staff of Representative Devin Nunes, who led the committee at the time.
Mr. Ratcliffe, at the urging of Mr. Nunes, picked Michael Ellis, another former House Intelligence Committee staffer, to serve as the deputy C.I.A. director.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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