FBI Raids Home of Ex-Trump Adviser John Bolton Day After He Slammed India Tariffs
The FBI on Friday conducted a raid on the residence of John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned fierce critic, just a day after he delivered a scathing rebuke of the President’s punitive tariff policy against India. While the official reason for the search is reportedly linked to an investigation into the handling of classified documents, the timing has intensified the political fallout between Trump and his former top aide.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the searches were part of a classified documents probe, but Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crime. The administration has remained officially silent, but FBI Director Kash Patel posted a cryptic message on X shortly after the raid began, stating, “No one is above the law FBI agents on mission.”
Even as the raid was apparently underway, Bolton himself remained defiant, taking a fresh jab at Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize ambitions over the Russia-Ukraine war. “Meetings will continue because Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but I don’t see these talks making any progress,” he tweeted.
The raid’s timing is highly notable, coming just one day after Bolton, in a public interview, called Trump an “aberrational president” and warned that US-India relations were “in a very bad place.” He sharply criticized the administration for singling out India with a combined 50% tariff for its continued purchase of Russian oil. “It turns out that Russia has not faced any new sanctions. China has not faced any new sanctions, notwithstanding the fact that they were the major purchasers of Russian oil and gas. India has been singled out,” Bolton pointed out.
He warned that Trump’s policy would backfire, undermining years of effort to build a strategic partnership with India to counter China’s influence in Asia. “Leaving India hanging out to dry as the only country on which punitive action has been taken obviously leads a lot of people to conclude that the US has given up on India, and I do worry that India is being driven closer to Russia and China,” he said. The former national security adviser urged both nations to try and keep the damage to the relationship at a “minimum” and focus on repairing it quickly.
