The FBI searched the home of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday, reportedly in relation to Bolton’s alleged possession of classified documents. Unsurprisingly, the same people who had no problem when the FBI raided the home of President Donald Trump are melting down.
Olivia Troye, former Homeland Security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, said on X that the search is an example of “authoritarianism.”
“When Kash Patel turns the FBI into Trump’s revenge squad, that’s not justice, it’s authoritarianism. Today it’s John Bolton. Tomorrow it could be any other critic who dares defy Trump. The Bureau’s credibility is being gutted from within. This is intimidation, not law enforcement. Every American should be alarmed.”
Troye, of course, had no grave concerns about “authoritarianism” after the August 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid when she jumped on CNN to speculate that Trump had mishandled secret documents and was in “bed” with “foreign adversaries.”
Former NBC host Chuck Todd said on X: “The senators who were bullied into confirming Kash Patel, how are you feeling today? It’s not like you weren’t warned that this guy would be comfortable politicizing the agency. Trump couldn’t have done this without the weak senate GOP enabling.”
Todd is the same person who, after the raid of Mar-a-Lago, said Republicans unifying around Trump were merely “under[cutting] faith in institutions.” Todd (along with three other NBC writers), told readers to “remember” that the FBI would only conduct a search with a “warrant” showing “probable cause” and therefore, Republicans should have preached “calm, or even measured caution” instead of reacting to the raid.
Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng said on Bluesky: “You do not have to like John Bolton to see this for what it is.” Suebsaeng wrote in an article that it doesn’t matter what Bolton “does or doesn’t have,” calling it “irrelevant to what’s going on here: An openly lawless administration and Republican Party that pretends to hate the ‘Deep State’ is merely expanding it.”
But that’s not the same approach Suebsaeng took when covering the Biden Department of Justice’s unprecedented Mar-a-Lago raid.
Trump, according to Suebsaeng, “claimed to be the victim of ‘lawlessness’ and ‘political persecution.’” Suebsaeng also implied that most Americans thought it was the right move — as if that justified the lawfare.
Decrying the FBI’s search of Bolton’s house, Jonah Goldberg said in a post on X: “Thank goodness the era of weaponizing the justice system and national security lawfare has come to an end.” Meanwhile Goldberg defended the raid on Mar-a-Lago as “entirely justified.”
Other Never Trumpers lamented the search of Bolton’s home.
Adam Kinzinger posted on Bluesky: “The Bolton raid should chill you.”
Bill Kristol posted on Bluesky: “How do you spell I-N-T-I-M-I-D-A-T-I-O-N?”
Miles Taylor posted: “BREAKING: FBI raids former Trump nat’l security advisor John Bolton’s home. Bolton has become a major Trump critic since the first administration. You cannot ignore this, America. Our Republic is being used as a revenge machine.”
The hypocrisy couldn’t be more glaring. When the Biden Department of Justice ordered an unprecedented raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Never Trumpers and their media allies cheered it. But now that one of their Beltway darlings underwent an FBI search, it’s suddenly “authoritarianism” and “chilling.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
