When news hit last week that federal agents had raided John Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington office, the reaction was as predictable as it was hysterical. The left immediately leapt into hysterics, spinning the story as proof of Trump’s alleged obsession with revenge, tying it to Bolton’s bitter falling-out with him. Within hours, the usual chorus was screeching the same tired lines: Democracy is under attack! Trump is a dictator! This was pure political retribution!
Only it wasn’t.
A new report from—if you can believe it—the New York Times has thrown cold water on that absurd little storyline. According to their reporting, the roots of this investigation don’t trace back to Trump at all. In fact, the probe gained traction under the Biden administration—an inconvenient truth that blows up the liberal media’s theory of political retribution.
The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration, when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case that remains open.
Sources say the emails at the heart of the case were written by Bolton himself and contained information pulled from classified documents he had access to while serving in the White House. Even worse, those messages were allegedly sent to people close to him as he pieced together his infamous 2020 anti-Trump book, The Room Where It Happened.