Trump Cancels John Bolton’s Secret Service Protection Despite Threats From Iranian Regime

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

John Bolton said on Tuesday he was “disappointed but not surprised” that his Secret Service protection has been canceled by President Donald Trump.

Bolton wrote on X that protection was reinstated to him by former President Joe Biden in 2021. The Department of Justice charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over a plot to assassinate Bolton in 2022 and he has faced other threats since. Trump himself has faced threats from Iran as well over the killing of Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani.

Bolton served as the ambassador to the United Nations from 2005-2006 and he briefly served in Trump’s first administration as national security advisor. Trump dismissed Bolton in 2019, saying they “disagreed strongly” on foreign policy issues. Bolton has since been a fierce critic of Trump, describing his former boss as amoral and deeply unprepared for the job of president.

“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service,” Bolton wrote on X.

He asked his followers to decide if the president made the “right call.”

“Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021. The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me,” he wrote. “That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination. The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”