On August 22, 2025, federal agents descended on the quiet Maryland home of John Bolton, the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, in a dramatic escalation of tensions between the two men. The FBI’s early morning raid, part of a national security investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, marked the latest—and perhaps most explosive—chapter in a relationship that has veered from wary alliance to public enmity and back again.
According to the New York Post, which first reported the news, the FBI’s search of Bolton’s residence was not an isolated incident. Agents were also seen entering a building in Washington where Bolton keeps an office, as confirmed by PBS NewsHour. The scope of the investigation, while officially undisclosed, was widely reported to center on whether Bolton illegally shared or retained classified materials, a charge that Bolton’s allies have forcefully denied.
Bolton, once a stalwart Republican foreign policy hawk and a key architect of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, has become one of the president’s fiercest critics since their 2019 falling out. His 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, painted Trump as “unfit” for the office and detailed a litany of foreign policy clashes and personal grievances. The book, which chronicled inside-the-Oval Office deliberations, alleged that Trump linked U.S. aid to Ukraine to investigations into his political rivals—an explosive claim that helped trigger Trump’s first impeachment inquiry. As Axios noted, “There has never been—and may never be—another book like this. Trump’s national security adviser took hyper-detailed, real-time notes, and is sharing them with the world just nine months after leaving.”
The White House, under Trump, fought fiercely to block the memoir’s publication, claiming it contained classified information. The Justice Department sought an emergency restraining order, but a federal judge ultimately allowed the book to be released—while opining that Bolton had “likely published classified materials” and “exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.” The Biden administration’s DOJ later shut down a criminal investigation into Bolton in 2021, but the controversy over his handling of sensitive information never fully subsided.
The August 2025 raid appears to be part of a broader campaign by the Department of Justice, now led by Trump appointees, to pursue public critics of the president. As reported by Democracy Docket, the DOJ has recently opened investigations into other prominent Trump adversaries, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, and several Obama-era intelligence officials. This has fueled accusations from Democrats and civil liberties groups that the administration is weaponizing law enforcement to punish political enemies.
During the raid, FBI Director Kash Patel took the unusual step of commenting publicly on social media, writing, “NO ONE is above the law… [FBI] agents on mission.” Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino also weighed in, declaring that “Public corruption will not be tolerated.” Such public pronouncements during an ongoing investigation are rare, and have drawn criticism from legal experts and former Justice Department officials.
For Bolton, the search of his home was the latest in a series of personal and professional blows delivered by Trump and his allies. In one of his first acts upon returning to the White House in 2025, Trump stripped Bolton—and several other political adversaries—of their security protections. Bolton, who had received a security detail due to credible assassination threats from Iran (including a 2022 plot for which an Iranian national was charged), told CNN at the time, “This is a matter that people should take seriously. It’s certainly a downer for expressing your opposition to Donald Trump.”
The president himself, when pressed by reporters about the FBI’s actions, offered a characteristically combative response. “Not a fan, he’s sort of a lowlife,” Trump told the White House press pool, adding, “He’s a very quiet person, except on television if he can say something bad about Trump. Not a smart guy, could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.” Yet, when asked about the raid’s timing, Trump claimed ignorance—before pivoting to suggest, “I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer,” a statement that, as Democracy Docket pointed out, is false; the attorney general, not the president, holds that official title.
Bolton himself was reportedly unaware of the FBI activity, according to CNN, and was neither detained nor charged with any crimes. The search was authorized by a federal magistrate judge in Maryland, as confirmed by ABC News. Legal analysts have noted that such a warrant would require probable cause that evidence of a crime could be found at the location, but stressed that a search alone does not imply guilt.
The roots of the Trump-Bolton feud stretch back to their time together in the White House. Bolton, who had been a vocal supporter of Trump during his first campaign and early presidency, was appointed national security adviser in March 2018. He quickly became a driving force behind the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran and was instrumental in the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal. But by the summer of 2019, cracks began to show. Bolton’s hawkish stance on North Korea and Afghanistan clashed with Trump’s desire for high-profile peace talks, and tensions spilled into public view. When Trump floated the idea of hosting the Taliban at Camp David, Bolton resisted, and the disagreement reportedly sparked the beginning of the end for his tenure.
Bolton’s exit from the White House in September 2019 was as chaotic as his time inside. Trump tweeted that he had asked for Bolton’s resignation; minutes later, Bolton tweeted that he had offered it the night before. The conflicting accounts underscored the dysfunction that many saw as emblematic of Trump’s first administration.
In the years since, Bolton’s criticism of Trump has only intensified. In a 2023 interview with CBS News, he called it “a big mistake politically for Republicans” to align with Trump for the 2024 election, adding, “It goes to the question of character and fitness for the presidency.” The paperback edition of his memoir, released in January 2024, included a new foreword warning that “a mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be President.” Bolton predicted that Trump’s second term would bring the U.S. to the brink of a constitutional crisis, and accused the president of abusing his power to target political rivals.
In a moment of surprising candor during a 2022 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Bolton rejected the notion that the January 6 Capitol riot was a “carefully planned coup.” “That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” he said. “It’s rambling from one … idea to another, one plan that falls through, and another comes up. Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol. As to that, there’s no doubt.” Bolton also remarked, “As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état, not here but other places, it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what he did.”
As the dust settles from the FBI’s raid, both sides are digging in for what promises to be a protracted legal and political battle. For critics, the investigation is a chilling sign of the administration’s willingness to use law enforcement against opponents. For supporters, it’s a necessary step to ensure that no one—including former officials—can flout the law. The only certainty is that the Trump-Bolton saga is far from over, and the stakes for American democracy remain as high as ever.
