‘Worse Than We Imagined’: The Wall Street Journal Drops Scathing Editorial Torching Trump Over ‘Vindictive’ Bolton Raid

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial putting President Donald Trump on blast over the raid his FBI conducted on his adviser-turned-critic John Bolton’s home and office on Friday.

Agents arrived at Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, at approximately 7:00 a.m. on Friday to search it as part of what the New York Post called a “national security probe” pertaining to classified documents.

A senior U.S. official told the paper that the probe into Bolton began “years ago,” and claimed that it was shut down “for political reasons.” FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly personally ordered an investigation into Bolton, and tweeted “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission” at 7:03 a.m. on Friday.

Vice President JD Vance later told NBC News’ Kristen Welker that the investigation into Bolton had to do with “broad concern” over Bolton, rather than classified documents alone.

Bolton has been highly critical of Trump since leaving his employ in September 2019. Earlier this year, he argued that Trump’s “mind is full of mush and he says whatever comes into it.”

The Journal opened its editorial on the matter by observing that “President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.”

Lamenting the “ominous turn” his “revenge campaign” had taken, the center-right newspaper stated that “It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.”

It continued:

The book investigation faded away under President Biden, but now it looks as if Mr. Patel is reviving it. Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained.

Mr. Trump made clear that he was out for blood against Mr. Bolton when he pulled the former adviser’s protective detail after his re-election. Mr. Bolton is widely known as a defense hawk, and in 2022 the Justice Department charged an Iranian national it said planned to murder him.

Iran has also targeted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his main adviser on Iran, Brian Hook. Yet Mr. Trump pulled their security details too, confirming it publicly in a way that all but told the Iranians that the Americans were more vulnerable. “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Mr. Trump said at the time.

“This is the kind of gratuitous viciousness that has increasingly defined Mr. Trump’s return to office,” remarked the Journal before concluding that “The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.”