John Bolton, former Trump official critical of president, has home searched

jurisprudence enforcement personnel were spotted fri exterior the Washington-area  abode belonging to longtime republican river figure John Bolton, a critic of President Donald Trump before and after spending 16 months in his first administration. 

Footage from multiple U.S. Media outlets, and a livestream from the website Lawfare, showed a presence of several vehicles, with some individuals wearing clothing with FBI logos, at the Bethesda, Md., residence.

Bolton was spotted Friday morning standing in the lobby of the Washington building where he keeps an office and talking to two people with "FBI" visible on their vests, according to the Associated Press. He left a few minutes later and appeared to have gone upstairs in the building, the AP reported.

"NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission," wrote FBI Director Kash Patel wrote, without mentioning Bolton, in an X post shortly after 7 a.m. Patel's message was reposted by a White House account, as well as by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Justice Department had no official comment to the Associated Press.

Bolton, 76, served in the administration of George W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Earlier in his career, he served in various capacities in the Republican administrations of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Bolton was named the third national security adviser of Trump's high-turnover first administration, serving from March 2018 to September 2019. 

"I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration," Trump said upon Bolton's departure. Since then, he has repeatedly referred to Bolton as "one of the dumbest people in government" in multiple social media posts.

Inside the administration, per multiple reports and a book written by Bolton, he advocated caution on the president's whirlwind rapprochement with North Korea and against Trump's decision to pull U.S. Troops out of Syria. Bolton was also opposed to Trump's plan, latter scrapped, to bring Taliban negotiators to Camp David to complete a peace deal in Afghanistan.

Trump's White House in 2020 sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the publication of Bolton's book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, alleging it contained classified information and threatened national security. The government argued Bolton hadn't sought the proper review process before the book published by Simon & Schuster went to the printing presses. 

A federal judge said an injunction was warranted, but that "Bolton's unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns." U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in his ruling that Bolton had subjected "himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability."

A few months after Lamberth's ruling, a National Security Council government classification expert raised allegations that the process had been politicized, accusing White House aides of making false assertions that Bolton had revealed classified information. 

Trump himself was indicted over improper handling of classified information, and was alleged to have documents bearing top secret classifications at his Florida estate. But that investigation was stopped by a federal judge — originally appointed to the bench by Trump — and a planned appeal was essentially rendered moot by Trump's election win last November.

Bolton and other first Trump administration officials saw their security clearances and Secret Service protection rescinded in January.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised a second administration that would include retribution, and law enforcement officials and legislators who have previously led or participated in investigations into Trump's business and political activities are increasingly under scrutiny themselves. 

Trump and Justice Department officials have alleged that Letitia James, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook have engaged in mortgage fraud.

James, New York state's attorney general, oversaw a Trump civil fraud case, Schiff was a prominent Democrat who has publicly criticized Trump's dealings with Russia and Ukraine, and Cook is a member of the Federal Reserve Board, whose decisions on interest rates have angered Trump.

The Trump administration announced this week that it would rescind the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, including some had worked on issues related to Russian threats to elections in 2016 and 2020, an issue that has long provoked Trump's ire.

Trump has argued that the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden were staffed with "deep state" actors who malignly investigated him. Democrats countered criticism of a "weaponized" Justice Department in the Biden administration by pointing to the fact that Democrats were indicted for alleged wrongdoing — including lawmakers Bob Menendez and Henry Cuellar, and Hunter Biden, the ex-president's son.

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