Trump Rails Against ‘Sleazebag’ John Bolton — But Insists He ‘Doesn’t Know Anything’ About Raid on His Home
President Donald Trump called his former National Security Advisor John Bolton a “sleazebag” on Friday, telling reporters that he “doesn’t know anything” about the FBI raid on Bolton’s home that occurred hours before.
Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, had his home in Maryland raided by FBI officials on Friday morning. The raid began at about 7 a.m. and was conducted as a “national security probe,” the New York Post reported. Agents were seen carrying boxes out of the home, but no specific reason has yet been given for the search.
Trump told reporters earlier in the day that he knew “nothing about it.”
In a later press gaggle– after the president made an announcement that the FIFA World Cup draw would take place in Washington in 2026– CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene asked, “Mr. President, I have a question about the search of ambassador Bolton’s home. The vice president recently did an interview saying that it’s about classified documents, but that there’s also broad concern about him. What are what are the concerns that you?”
“I haven’t spoken to Pam [Bondi] and the group yet, but I will be, I saw that just like everybody else,” said Trump. “I try and stay out of that stuff.”
He continued:
And I’m chief law enforcement officer, believe it or not. You know, I don’t like to go around saying that, but I am. That’s the position. But I purposely don’t want to really get involved in it. I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought he was a sleazebag, actually. And he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome, but so do a lot of people and they’re not being affected by anything we do. I don’t know anything about it. I just saw that.
I’ll find out about it but if you believe the news, which I do I guess, his house was raided today, but my house was raided also, called Mar-a-Lago. They went through everything they could, including my young son’s room and my wife’s area. They went through her drawers, as the expression goes. They went through everything you can imagine. And when she came back, she looked. She said, she’s very neat, you know, she’s meticulous and she looked and she said, “woo, this wasn’t this wasn’t the way that she had it.” So, you know, so I know the feeling. It’s not a good feeling. Thank you.
Vice President JD Vance told NBC News’ Kristen Welker Friday– in a preview of a Meet the Press interview that will air on Sunday– that the government had a “broad concern” about Bolton.
“Classified documents are certainly part of it, but I think that there’s a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton. They’re going to look into it. And, like I said, if there’s no crime here, we’re not going to prosecute it. If there is a crime here, of course, Ambassador Bolton will get his day in court,” Vance said.
Bolton has long been a vocal critic of the president since he resigned from the Trump administration in 2019. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has said that Trump’s “mind is full of mush” and sharply criticized Trump’s foreign policy decisions, writing that “[c]haos is embedded in his DNA.”
Bolton warned earlier in the month that President Donald Trump was coming after him, telling ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that “I think he’s already come after me and several others in withdrawing the protection that we had from the Iranians for the attack on Qasem Soleimani. So I think, and I said in the new foreword to the paperback edition of my book, I think it is a retribution presidency.”
Watch above via CNN.
