On a quiet street in suburban Maryland, not far from where I live, the FBI raided the home of John Bolton, a card-carrying conservative who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser and is now one of his fiercest critics. Agents in highly visible jackets proclaiming their law enforcement affiliation hauled away bags and boxes of “evidence” as video cameras rolled.
Trump acolytes accuse Bolton of misusing classified documents, which may or may not be true. But however the legal case against Bolton plays out, the made-for-TV raid sends a deliberate and deeply dangerous message: Trump is determined to use the full powers of his presidency to punish his enemies.
“It is clear that Mr. Trump and his appointees are perverting the justice system to serve their political interests and intimidate their critics,” argues a New York Times editorial. The Wall Street Journal sounds a similar warning: “It is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.”
Trump’s thirst for “vengeance” seems limitless, and the Bolton raid is emblematic of a much larger, and more insidious, pattern. A few days later, the president fired Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who defied his persistent pressure to lower interest rates. Just before the raid, he fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, after the agency downplayed the impact of the U.S. raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
During the early months of his second term, Trump has terminated Justice Department lawyers, inspectors general and countless other career professionals who might derail his drive for power.
He has encouraged criminal action against prosecutors who pursued him and lawmakers who criticized him, and he suggested impeaching judges who ruled against him. He has penalized a range of institutions — law firms, universities, media companies — that dare to challenge his omnipotence.
This pattern of punishment is not a surprise. Trump has always nurtured a sense of grievance and outrage among his supporters, and he even turned the impeachments and criminal cases brought against him into political profit. This is the man who sold copies of his own mug shot.
“It’s not like he was hiding the plan,” writes Susan Glasser in The New Yorker. “When Donald Trump campaigned for a return to the White House in 2024, he openly embraced a platform of revenge and retribution against his political enemies.”
John Bolton has always been an especially aggravating foe. Given his impeccable right-wing credentials, he could not be dismissed as a partisan pleader. And he turned against the president with particular vehemence, writing before last year’s election that “Trump is unfit to be president,” and adding, “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”
If Bolton is eventually charged with a crime, he will get his day in court. But Trump has already inflicted irreparable damage, even if no charges are ever filed or legal judgment rendered.
The well-publicized scenes of FBI agents raiding Bolton’s home were designed to leave an indelible impression: He must be guilty of something. The first paragraph of his obituary will mention the episode, no matter what else happens to the case.
Then there are the legal fees. The government has unlimited resources to pursue charges against Bolton, who now must hire expensive lawyers to defend himself, no matter how specious the charges might turn out to be.
Perhaps most important, the scenes that played out on TV, and are forever searchable on YouTube, were clearly crafted to create a chilling effect, to intimidate anyone else who might follow Bolton and criticize Trump. We will never know the columns that remain unwritten, the comments that remain unstated, the cases that are never filed and the briefs never written.
“The search is a new chapter in Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against his critics,” writes the Times. “The White House and its loyalists in the Justice Department and the FBI are sending a clear message: Keep quiet, or we will use the extraordinary power of federal law enforcement to threaten your job or your liberty and put you under a lasting cloud of suspicion. And they are using the fearsome punitive authority of the government to conduct this campaign.”
The John Boltons who understand the perils posed by Trump must remain undaunted and undeterred by that “fearsome” power. But they are taking great risks in doing so. The next house the FBI raids could be theirs.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].
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