The FBI searched former national security adviser John Bolton's home in 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 bureau was "conducting court authorized activity in the area. There is no threat to public safety.”
The agency declined to comment further on the search. Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided FBI Director Kash Patel the intelligence that was the basis of the search warrant used by federal investigators to raid Bolton’s home and office, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The intelligence, the source said, involved what was alleged to be a mishandling of classified material by Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term, before a contentious exit strained their relationship.
In a post on X early Friday, 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 search 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 search.
The search began around 7 a.m. as part of an investigation looking into Bolton's handling of classified materials and potential instances of such documents being used in leaks to news media, said a source familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about an ongoing investigation. The search was related to a criminal investigation that began during the Biden administration that did not go further at that time, the source added.
An FBI official said an address on M Street in Washington, D.C., was also being searched.
U.S. intelligence agencies have chosen in the past not to pursue criminal leak prosecutions because the information involved is so sensitive that the agencies do not want it made public in court. It was not clear if that played a role in the Biden administration's decision.
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 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 civil case against Bolton over his book. NBC News also reported at the time that the department had closed a criminal investigation into Bolton.
A former Justice Department official with knowledge of Merrick Garland DOJ's decision to drop the case on the book said it was based on the facts of the case and likelihood of it prevailing in court. They said politics played no role in the decision and noted that the Garland DOJ appointed a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents and prosecuted Biden's son, Hunter, on tax and gun charges.
“Attorney General Merrick Garland investigated Democrats and Republicans, including President Joe Biden, his boss,” said the former DOJ official, who asked not to be named. “To suggest that any decision was made based on political reasons is absurd.”
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 the book's 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 and obtained a letter from a National Security Council official in September 2020 which said 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.
A source close to Bolton told NBC News they believe the search on his home was in response to his frequent criticism of the Trump administration, including in his book.
“It’s retribution, pure and simple,” the source said.
Vice President JD Vance disputed the notion that the search of Bolton's property was rooted in politics, telling NBC News' "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker on Friday there were "broad concerns" about the former Trump official that extended beyond classified documents.
"Our law enforcement agencies are going to be driven by law and not by politics," Vance said. "If we think that Ambassador Bolton has committed a crime, of course, eventually prosecutions will come."
Asked about this morning's search, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in an interview on Fox News that he did not believe the action was taken because of personal animus.
"So I don’t think this is retribution, I think this is accountability,” Comer said. “We’ll see if, for no reason, they raided his house just to embarrass John Bolton, like the Democrats did to President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, then I think that they should bear some criticism. But right now, I have confidence in Kash Patel, and I don’t believe he would do anything without having ample evidence to move forward.”
Trump told reporters during a visit to a museum in Washington, D.C., that he did not know about the search beforehand and would be briefed on the matter.
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.
