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Intel community can’t find documents Trump wants to use to go after ex-adviser - Alternet.org
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an 9 25
Following asearchof former national security adviser John Bolton’s downtown Washington office last month, a court filing released Tuesday shows that the FBI found classified documents, Politico reports.
According to the filing, the August 22 search found "materials" that "referenced weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. mission to the United Nations and records related to the U.S. government’s strategic communications."
There were also "several collections or folders that were labeled 'confidential' and some pages marked 'secret,'" Politico notes.
FBI agents also searched Bolton's Maryland homewhere they seized a white binder labeled “statements and reflections to Allied Strikes” and four folders specifically marked “Trump I–IV."
Both search warrants, Politico explains, "indicated FBI agents were seeking evidence related to three felony offenses, including gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act and retaining classified information without permission."
President Donald Trump, who was charged with stashing classified documentsat his Palm Beach country club when he left office in 2021, has targeted Bolton, whom he called a "warmonger," for his vocal criticism of his presidency.
"I read this and asked, “how could he be this dumb.” And then I remembered . . . other than tepidly standing up to Donald Trump (after being fired) John Bolton is a rightwing war criminal who has always been terrible and wrong about almost everything," quipped Florida Democrat Matt Harringer on X.
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AN 9 25
FBI was hunting for documents about Trump in raid on John Bolton's house: report
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mma
Right-wing media celebrate Trump’s campaign of retribution against political opponents
Right-wing pundit following the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house: “Retribution? You bet it is. And it should be.”
Written by Gideon Taaffe & Torri Lonergan
Published 08/27/25
Following the FBI’s raid on former Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s home, right-wing media acknowledged criticisms that President Donald Trump is using the federal government to exact “retribution” and “revenge” against his political opponents. Now right-wing media are celebrating the lawfare they clamored for in the lead up to the 2024 election. They have called Bolton’s raid “payback time,” saying “it should be” retribution, and calling for Trump to “put them up for treason.”
- ## Trump’s FBI raided Bolton’s house following right-wing media calls for retribution
- The FBI raided John Bolton’s home in Maryland as part of an investigation into whether Bolton illegally shared or possessed classified information.According to the New York Times, “Six cars were parked in Mr. Bolton’s driveway, at least one of them a dark-colored S.U.V. At one point three agents wearing F.B.I. jackets were seen carrying in empty document boxes, presumably to collect evidence.” The raid comes after Trump was previously investigated for his handling of classified documents, which was dropped after he won the 2024 election. The New York Times, [8/22/25; ABC, 11/26/24]
- Once a national security adviser in the first Trump administration, Bolton has become a public critic of the president.Bolton wrote a memoir that detailed his experiences in the Trump White House and claimed, “I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.” Trump revoked Bolton’s security clearance shortly after his second term began in January. In the lead up to Trump’s second term, it was reported that Donald Trump Jr.’s goal was “to keep the John Boltons of the world outside a second Trump administration.” ABC News, [8/22/25; Axios, 4/24/24]
- Right-wing media amped up calls for revenge and retribution in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election. In October, Trump ally Mike Davis claimed, “Retribution is a key component of justice.” In 2023, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed, “You better believe it’s open season” when Republicans regain the White House. Others called for a “reign of terror,” and for “Democrats to get a healthy dose of their own medicine.” After the election, War Room host and Trump ally Steve Bannon said, “We want retribution and we're going to get retribution.” Media Matters, [10/15/24, 6/17/24, 12/12/23, 12/16/24]
- ## Right-wing media cheer on Bolton raid: “It’s time for payback”
- Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt reacted to the Bolton raid by claiming, “It clearly is payback time.”Schmitt continued, “People need to be punished for what they have done, because they started it. They started this. He didn't start it. They started it.” Newsmax,*Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [8/22/25]
- Schmitt later reiterated, “It seems very obvious … this is revenge. … It is retaliation,” while a chyron read, “Trump flips the script on left’s lawfare.” Trump senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro responded, “People will say retribution. Yeah, maybe. And they deserve it. But it's more about, for me, accountability.” Newsmax,*Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [8/22/25]
- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed there is “no ambiguity” that Trump is taking revenge on his political enemies and that “it’s time for payback.” Finnerty: “The Associated Press writing that ‘Donald Trump ran on a promise to use the powers of the government for revenge against those he believe wronged him, and now he appears to be fulfilling that campaign promise.’ Exactly. Yes, exactly. That's exactly what is happening right now. There's no ambiguity about that.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [8/25/25]
- Finnerty later added, “I don't think that payback should be a bad word.” He continued, “Payback, retribution, call it whatever you want. An eye for an eye. Sometimes two wrongs can make a right, especially if it benefits the country and benefits our political system in the future. And I sort of think that's the direction that the White House and the Department of Justice are going here. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [8/25/25]
- Right-wing streamer Zack Hoyt, known as Asmongold, claimed, “If you start a game and you say these are my rules and you start working that way, you shouldn't be surprised if somebody goes and does that to you,” adding, “Trump should go to try to put these people in jail.”Hoyt continued, “Put them up for treason. Do whatever the worst thing is you can do, do it. Because that's what they would have done to you. And if you don't do it to them, they will do it to you given a long enough timeline. They tried to ruin his life. Exactly. Yeah. Treason, big no no. Yeah. Always do it. Always do it. Never like, this is the way I always look at things. If somebody would do something to you, do it to them first. Immediately. Don't let them even have the chance.” YouTube, Asmongold TV, [8/23/25]
- Fox host Greg Gutfeld said, “Some people say it's retribution. I say, who cares?” Gutfeld continued, “When you think about the constant lawfare, the gerrymandering, the Dems never expect it to happen to them. They're like home invaders who didn't expect a well-armed occupant when they showed up, and Trump is well-armed.” His co-host Jesse Watters added, “And how many people did they get, Greg? They got Stone, they got Navarro, they got Bannon. They got all the Trump family, Manafort, Carter Page. The list is long, so I believe this is probably going to be the first in many raids.” Fox News,*The Five*, [8/22/25]
- Fox News ran a chyron that read “Bolton's learning the hard way” as host Laura Ingraham said, “After cheering on lawfare against President Trump, John Bolton is learning the hard way, perhaps, that no one is indeed above the law.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/22/25]
- The First’s Jesse Kelly reacted to the Bolton raid, saying, “Retribution? You bet it is. And it should be.”Kelly added, “When you are in a war for power, and we very much are in a war for power, you had better hit back and let the enemy know that it can come right back to him.” The First, *I’m Right with Jesse Kelly*, [8/25/25]
- Right-wing conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza claimed, “Revenge or retribution is a very important principle. It’s called Tit for Tat.” He added, “In game theory, it’s the only way to achieve a stable equilibrium. It’s also the entire basis for our legal system of punishment. There is no “principle” that says, let the bad guys get away with it.” Twitter/X, [8/24/25]
- Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter commented, “I support retribution against our political enemies.”Schlichter also wrote, “Just a reminder that retribution is a key component of a civilized society; wrongdoing must be punished.” Twitter/X, [8/23/25, 8/22/25]
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earlier today, Donald Trump ordered his Gestapo to raid the house of neo-con war-monger John Bolton, who has openly criticized Trump’s authoritarian embrace of Putin and overall ignorant recklessness. Instead of releasing the full Epstein files, Trump’s Department of Justice gave us interview transcripts with Ghislaine Maxwell that - shockingly - absolve Trump of any alleged wrongdoing. For her part, Maxwell, who groomed and raped girls with Jeffrey Epstein, was given a new, cushy home in a minimum security camp in Texas
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the hill
At the end of January, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked security details for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Dr. Anthony Fauci— despite ongoing, credible threats against their lives.
“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” Trump asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”
Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something happened to any of them, Trump replied, “Certainly I would not … They made a lot of money. They can hire their own security.” The president offered to give them the phone numbers of “some good security companies.”
A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled the security detail protecting retired Gen. Mark Milley and ordered an inquiry to determine if he should be demoted.
Combined with his pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters and convicted seditious conspirators, and the cancellation of security clearances for dozens of his political adversaries, Trump’s actions have launched what could be called the “imperious presidency.”
The federal government has an obligation to protect its public servants from job-related threats. One can hope that all Americans will condemn putting these men in harm’s way because they corrected, criticized or condemned their former boss.
Think Tanks cashing in on dark money; orgs keep funding sources a secret: Interview
John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, had a well-deserved reputation as a brutally candid, hard-to-like foreign policy hawk. He replaced Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018. At the time, Trump praised Bolton as a patriot, “well-respected and a tough cookie,” saying he “has strong views on things but that’s okay.”
Bolton helped craft the administration’s hard line on Iran, but he opposed what he regarded as Trump’s dovish overtures to North Korea and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor was he a fan of the president’s “we’ll have to see response” to questions about whether the U.S. would recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Trump fired Bolton in 2019. “He wasn’t liked at all and wasn’t respected very much,” Trump declared in 2020. “Personally, I thought he was crazy.”
By then, Bolton was casting doubt on Trump’s fitness to be president. He subsequently
Trump “incapable of advanced thinking” and 
as a way of life.”
In 2022, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged with plotting to murder Bolton. An Iranian was subsequently charged (in absentia) for offering $300,000 to kill Bolton. Officials in two federal agencies recently informed Bolton that the threat level is just as strong now as it was then.
Mike Pompeo, a member of the House from 2011 to 2017, occupied high-level positions throughout Trump’s first administration. When Trump elevated Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of State, the president declared he had “earned the praise of members of both parties” and would “do a fantastic job.”
Pompeo briefly considered running for president in 2024, criticized Trump for mishandling classified documents and “staring into the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood,” and promised voters “solutions, not tweets.” He still went on to endorse the former president and called Trump “a great guy” on the eve of the 2024 election.
Iran has vowed retaliation against Pompeo for helping plan the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Informed that Trump had revoked security details for members of his administration, a CIA officer predicted that “somebody is going to get killed.” Pompeo explained the order as “a reflection of Trump’s character or lack thereof.”
Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Freedom in 2007 as the architect of the President’s Emerging Plan For AIDS Relief, which saved millions of lives by distributing drugs in Africa.
As a member of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci was initially praised by Trump, who said, “He has become a major television star for all the right reasons.” But, while declaring that Trump’s briefings were “helpful,” Fauci corrected misstatements about, for example, the likelihood of COVID-19 disappearing with the onset of warmer weather, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and a claim that 99 percent of cases were harmless.
As Trump Republicans and libertarians condemned mask mandates and lockdowns of public buildings, Trump asserted that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” Before the end of Trump’s term, Fauci had become the administration official whom COVID critics loved to hate.
In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to drag Fauci, his wife and children into the street, beat them to death and set them on fire. Since then, the threats have kept on coming.
Trump appointed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019. A year later, Milley apologized for inserting himself into domestic politics by accompanying Trump as he walked through Lafayette Square, ostensibly to clear racial justice protestors, in what turned out to be a photo op.
At his retirement ceremony, Milley declared that he had taken an oath to the Constitution, not “to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
Trump has said that Milley committed treason and deserves the death penalty for supposedly going behind his back in dealing with Chinese officials at the end of his administration. And like Bolton and Pompeo, Milley has been threatened with death by Iran for his role in the killing of Soleimani.
Trump has often compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. But he clearly has not yet signed on to the 16th president’s call for “malice toward none” nor for “charity for all,” let alone tried “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
*Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Tags Anthony FauciAnthony FauciDonald TrumpIranJohn BoltonMark MilleyMike PompeoMike Pompeosecurity protection
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new 12 24
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who is the presumptive next United Nations (U.N.) ambassador is one of President-elect Donald Trump's more traditional Cabinet appointments, and is unlikely to face a tough confirmation battle in the Senate. But one former Trump administration official is hoping she'll usher in drastic cuts to the U.N.'s budget during the president-elect's second term.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton — who was former President George W. Bush's U.N. ambassador before briefly serving as Trump's National Security Advisor in 2018 — laid out his proposal for what he hopes Stefanik and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is Trump's secretary of state-designate, accomplish at the U.N. over the next four years. Bolton is particularly hoping Stefanik, Rubio and Trump will do away with a U.N. funding mechanism that he likened to "taxation of America by other U.N. members."
"Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory 'assessed' contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque 'capacity to pay' formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor," Bolton wrote. "A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it isn’t our votes in these bodies that matter... This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for."
READ MORE:Trump nomination of Stefanik to UN resurfaces 'ultra MAGA' transformation
Bolton elaborated that because the U.S. has a vote and veto on the vaunted Security Council that's written into the U.N. charter, it will effectively face zero consequences for doing away with assessed contributions. He also argued that "U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations" claiming that that the U.S. gets "enormous credit" for its U.N. funding commitment is "false."
"Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more," Bolton wrote. "It’s time they get their comeuppance."
The former U.N. ambassador went on to applaud Trump's previous withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which President Joe Biden rejoined in 2021. Bolton predicted that Trump would again withdraw the U.S. from UNESCO (which leads U.N. efforts to fight poverty, increase literacy and build "a culture of peace") and other U.N. agencies that "prove unreformable." He also hoped that the U.S. would redirect funding previously appropriated for the U.N. to the military budget, which is currently the largest in the world at $916 billion in 2023 and accounts for 40% of all global military spending combined.
"Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system," he wrote. "While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions."
READ MORE:['Your views have changed': CNN host reminds Elise Stefanik of her past Trump disdain
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