Long before President Trump stitched Make America Great Again onto a red cap, John Bolton had stitched it into conservative American foreign policy. Without Bolton, the Trump Doctrine would not be what it is today: a coherent strategy that helped unite the coalition that won the 2024 elections. If not for Bolton’s intellectual influence, wielded over decades, it might be Trump who would be sitting at home writing his memoirs, not Bolton.
Nevertheless, the administration has chosen to persecute Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the first Trump term and has since become an outspoken critic. In late August, the FBI searched Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington, D.C., office, reportedly for evidence of classified information. They seized laptops, smartphones, memory drives, boxes of his “printed daily activities,” a white binder labeled “Statements and Reflections to Allied Strikes,” and folders marked “Trump I–IV.” As seems to mysteriously happen with the FBI and political cases — including the August 2022 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home — television news crews quickly appeared on scene to provide breathless coverage.
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