Name: John Bolton and the Politics of Lawfare and Retribution
Uploaded: 2025-08-25T22:04:00Z
Duration: 4 min 30 s
Description: Review & Outlook: The FBI raid on Donald Trump's former National Security advisor , John Bolton, makes it clearer that second-term success for the President includes retribution.

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Review & Outlook: The FBI raid on Donald Trump's former National Security advisor , John Bolton, makes it clearer that second-term success for the President includes retribution. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

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Review & Outlook: The FBI raid on Donald Trump's former National Security advisor , John Bolton, makes it clearer that second-term success for the President includes retribution.

John Bolton and the Politics of Lawfare and Retribution

For those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there that have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. We will take care of it.

In 2023, Donald Trump signaled that payback was on the cards for those who'd wronged him, but as the 2024 election neared, he toned down his rhetoric.

I'm not gonna have time for retribution.

Going on to suggest that lawfare would be a thing of the past.

When we win back the White House, we will have no higher priority than ending the weaponization of- this horrible legal system that is developed. Today, it's becoming increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part of how Mr. Trump will define success in his second term. August 22nd, and FBI agents raided both the home and office of Mr. Trump's first term national security advisor, John Bolton. They showed up unannounced at seven o'clock in the morning, around the time that FBI Director Kash Patel posted to Social Media Platform, X, "NO ONE is above the law, @FBI agents on mission." Shortly after which Attorney General Pam Bondi replied to the post, "America's safety isn't negotiable," she wrote, "Justice will be pursued. Always." Neither Mr. Patel nor Ms. Bondi specified to whom they were referring, but one can fathom a guess.

I purposely don't wanna really get involved in it. I'm not a fan of John Bolton. I thought he was a sleazebag actually.

Mr. Bolton fell out with Mr. Trump during the President's first term. Following Mr. Trump's election win in 2024, Mr. Bolton was vocal about how he saw the future playing out.

The real question is, whether Trump wants to pursue a coherent policy, especially in national security, or whether it'll be a repeat of the first term, where certainly in the foreign and defense policy space, it was almost chaotic?

When Mr. Bolton was let go as Mr. Trump's national security advisor, he went on to write a book titled, "The Room Where It Happened" about his experience in the White House. In response, Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication of the book. The president then claimed that Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information; though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material. The book investigation eventually faded away under President Biden, but now, it looks as if Mr. Patel has revived it.

Classified documents are certainly part of it, but I think that there's a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton. They're gonna look into it.

Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe, doesn't matter either way. He made clear that he was out for blood against Mr. Bolton when he pulled the former advisor's protection detail after his reelection. The same too happened to Mike Pompeo, Mr. Trump's former secretary of state and Mr. Trump's top aid, Brian Hook. Concerningly, all three men have been targets for Iran.

When you work for government, at some point, your security detail comes off, and you can't have 'em forever. They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too.

Mr. Bolton has continued to speak candidly about Mr. Trump's second term decisions, both pros and cons, including in articles here at the editorial page at the Wall Street Journal.

He doesn't have a philosophy of national security. He doesn't do policy in a conventionally, understood meaning of that term. Everything is ad hoc and transactional, and really most of it's seen through the prism of, "How does this benefit Donald Trump?"

It's unlikely that Mr. Bolton broke any laws on national security secrets, yet now, he has to pay for legal counsel, and his family has to endure the anxiety of being under federal government siege.

Just because you have the authority and the discretion to do something like this, doesn't mean you should, so we're waiting. We just don't wanna see the FBI weaponized for the other side, if you will, just turning the playbook over.

Considering Mr. Trump has said that he wasn't out for retribution, and that the days of lawfare like Mr. Trump suffered would be over under his administration, it's hard not to see this action as anything other than a vendetta.

He suffers major Trump derangement syndrome, but so do a lot of people, and they're not being affected by anything we do.

WSJ Opinion: John Bolton and the Politics of Lawfare and Retribution

Videos that speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations."  

WSJ Opinion: John Bolton and the Politics of Lawfare and Retribution

Review and Outlook by The Editorial Board

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