The FBI raided former national security adviser John Bolton's home in Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday as part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records,” a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
An FBI official said in a statement that the agency was "conducting court authorized activity in the area. There is no threat to public safety.”
The agency declined to comment further on the raid. Bolton did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
In a post on X early Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote, "NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino also appeared to refer to the raid in posts on X.
"America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always," Bondi wrote early Friday.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated,” Bongino wrote.
The New York Post was the first to report news of the raid.
The raid began around 7 a.m., and no other addresses or locations are presently anticipated to be searched, a source familiar with the matter said.
The probe was looking into the handling of classified materials and potential instances of such documents being used in leaks to news media, the source said. The search was related to an investigation that began during the Biden administration that did not go further at that time, the source added.
Bolton served during two Republican administrations, first as ambassador to the United Nations during George W. Bush's administration and later as national security adviser to President Donald Trump for about a year and a half during his first term.
Trump and Bolton did not part ways amicably, with the president in 2019 claiming he had fired Bolton and Bolton claiming that he had offered to resign after a disagreement.
Despite his work in the first Trump administration, Bolton has emerged as a fierce critic of Trump after he left office the first time in 2021, even writing a 2020 memoir about his time in the administration.
During the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice investigated Bolton over classified information, and had unsuccessfully pursued legal action to stop the publication of his memoir and keep him from getting money from it.
But in 2021, during the Biden administration, the Justice Department and Bolton’s attorney informed a federal judge that the government was dropping its legal efforts against Bolton over his book. NBC News also reported at the time that the department had closed a criminal investigation into Bolton.
Bolton’s book alleged that Trump frequently prioritized his personal political interests over national security, and described various instances of what Bolton considered misconduct or incompetence in the administration’s handling of international affairs.
Prior to publication, the Trump-era Justice Department sued Bolton, arguing that he had violated prepublication review requirements by moving ahead without final written clearance — a process meant to ensure that no classified information was disclosed. Initially, the department sought to block the book’s release entirely. When that failed, the administration continued its legal campaign, attempting to recover all profits Bolton earned from the book and claiming he had breached contractual obligations related to his security clearance. That effort also failed in court.
Bolton maintained that he had fulfilled his legal obligations by obtaining confirmation from a National Security Council official in April 2020 that the book contained no classified material. However, the White House later initiated a second review, led by a more senior official, which delayed publication. Bolton’s legal team argued that this additional review was politically motivated — a “transparent effort,” they claimed, to suppress politically damaging revelations about Trump’s conduct while in office.
Ultimately, the Biden administration chose not to continue the legal battle and dropped the case.
Earlier this year, just several days into the second Trump administration, the president canceled Bolton's Secret Service detail, despite the fact that Bolton was the target of an alleged murder-for-hire scheme by a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
More recently, Bolton has been critical of Trump’s foreign policy, questioning his decision to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and blasting members of the Trump administration this year for using a Signal group chat rather than secure government channels to discuss upcoming military strikes.
In 2022, Bolton even said he was “seriously considering” running for president in the Republican primary to prevent Trump from winning another term.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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