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By Jesus Mesa
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The FBI was searching the Maryland home and Washington office of former national security adviser John Bolton on Friday morning, part of a renewed investigation into the alleged mishandling of classified information related to his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, a source told CNN and the Associated Press.
Bolton, a hawkish figure who frequently clashed with then-President Donald Trump and later became one of his fiercest critics, was not detained or charged. The dual search warrants, however, signaled a sharp escalation in a case once thought closed.
At the time of its release, The Room Where It Happened was one of the most high-profile and damaging insider accounts of the Trump presidency. It sold more than 780,000 copies in its first week. Trump publicly threatened Bolton with jail time, and his Justice Department sued to block the book's release and seize the author's profits.
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The lawsuit failed, but not before a federal judge ruled that Bolton "likely published classified materials" and had "exposed his country to harm." The legal battle ended in 2021 under President Joe Biden, when the lawsuit was dropped and a grand jury inquiry was abandoned.
The case now appears to be active again. Newsweek has reached out to Bolton personally for comment but neither he nor his legal team have remarked publicly on the FBI search. President Donald Trump told reporters Friday morning that he learned about the raid only after turning on the TV.
"He can be very unpatriotic. We're going to find out. I know nothing about it; I just saw it this morning," Trump said.
Inside Bolton's Book: The Claims Trump Tried to Bury
The Room Where It Happened, published in June 2020, offered a behind-the-scenes account of Bolton's 17 months in the White House. The memoir painted Trump as erratic, uninformed and overly focused on personal loyalty.
China and the 2020 Election
According to Bolton, Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping during a 2019 G20 summit to buy American agricultural products to boost his reelection prospects. "He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.
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Endorsement of Uyghur Internment
Bolton claimed Trump told Xi that building internment camps for Uyghur Muslims was "exactly the right thing to do," and refused to issue a White House statement commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Venezuela: Coup and Chaos
Trump once described Venezuela as "really part of the United States" and repeatedly floated the idea of an invasion, Bolton wrote. During a failed coup attempt against President Nicolás Maduro, Trump reportedly wavered on support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó, dismissing him as "weak."
North Korea: Rocket Man and Reality TV
Bolton said Trump was more interested in pageantry than substance in his summit with Kim Jong Un. He recounted the president's obsession with delivering a "Rocket Man" CD to the North Korean leader and quoted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling Trump "so full of shit" during one summit.
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Authorizing Strikes and Foreign Pressure
Bolton alleged that Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu permission to strike Iran. He also recounted Trump telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that he would quash a DOJ investigation into Turkey's state-run Halkbank.
Ignorance of Geography and Alliances
Bolton said Trump didn't know Finland wasn't part of Russia and seemed unaware that the U.K. possessed nuclear weapons. He accused Trump of often making foreign policy decisions "on impulse, with little regard for strategy."
Quid Pro Quo with Ukraine
Bolton backed claims that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden's son, which led to his first impeachment.
"I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations," Bolton wrote at the time.
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