LIVE | Former Trump Adviser John Bolton Returns Home After FBI Raid | Trump News | US News | N18G
#trump #johnbolton #raid Former national security adviser John Bolton returned to his Bethesda, Maryland home Friday evening after it was raided by FBI agents earlier in the day. Wearing his signature pinstriped suit, the 76-year-old waved to reporters outside but declined to comment, reported New York Post.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the FBI searched both Bolton’s home and his downtown Washington, D.C. office after a federal judge signed off on warrants. Agents were seen leaving both locations with several boxes of material.
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00:00And he's very bad at what he does, but he worked out great for me.
00:07Now, John Belton is often on our network discussing national security matters.
00:12He does not shy away from criticizing Donald Trump.
00:18Putin clearly won.
00:20Trump didn't come away with anything except more meetings.
00:24Trump has tried that before, for example, with his direct negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
00:30That didn't work out anything.
00:32This is, I think, typical of Trump the man.
00:35This is the kind of character or lack thereof who's now president.
00:43Ali, what more extraordinaries, but this...
00:47Look, if he's done something wrong, then obviously that's right.
00:50It's proper that it's search.
00:52It just all seems a little too convenient.
00:54So there's certainly no love lost between Donald Trump and John Bolton, but I will say this, Richard.
00:59In order to execute a search warrant like we saw the FBI do today, that's not something that FBI or prosecutors can do on their own unilaterally.
01:08I've written many search warrant applications.
01:10What you have to do is write a detailed document laying out your proof.
01:14And what you have to be able to show is that there is probable cause that a crime was committed
01:19and that you'll find evidence of that crime in the locations you're searching.
01:23We see the office here and also John Bolton's home.
01:26Now, probable cause is a lower standard than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which you need in order to convict someone.
01:31But probable cause is a substantial showing.
01:34It's not nothing.
01:35And when you write that document up, you then have to walk it over to a federal judge who has to review it and approve.
01:41And I will tell you, federal judges are not rubber stamps when it comes to these.
01:46And it appears here that DOJ had to get two different federal judges because they executed these warrants in two different federal districts, one in D.C., one in Maryland.
01:53So it appears that two different federal judges reviewed this and found not that John Bolton is guilty of any offense necessarily, but that there's at least probable cause to do the search warrant.
02:05Now, there could be several things true at once, which, A, there could be probable cause to do a search warrant, and, B, this still could be payback and retribution from Trump because he's made no mistake of his feelings about John Bolton.
02:16And this DOJ has a pattern of going after opening investigations on people who Trump believes to be his political and prosecutorial tormentors.
02:24I guess the one thing we can say about this is we'll find out one way or the other that either find something and charge him or they won't.
02:33Right. And if they do charge him, then he'll have the right to a trial, right?
02:36I mean, people get tried and found guilty a lot.
02:39People get tried and acquitted sometimes, too.
02:41So ultimately, yes, the proof literally will be in the documents.
02:45The proof will be in what they do with respect to John Bolton.
02:47We won't be left to speculate about this at some point.
02:50Of crime, that there is absolutely a crime, but just that you're looking into that.
02:55That gets you the ability to have a court-sanctioned warrant.
02:59And so we should hasten to say that there are many warrants that are issued by magistrates and judges on a daily basis to investigate crimes.
03:07Many lead to criminal prosecutions.
03:10Many do not lead to criminal prosecutions.
03:13And so if this all stemmed from a book that, of course, Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, may have written,
03:19then you could go to a magistrate and swear out an oath or affirmation indicating that this information had to come from a particular place,
03:27particularly some kind of private document.
03:31And based upon that, you could convince a judge that maybe there's something there.
03:35And that would then allow the FBI to go in and make the search of his home and his office, as we're seeing done here.
03:41Stand by for us, Joey.
03:44We do want to go to CNN Senior National Security Analyst now, Juliette Kayyem.
03:47Juliette, I'm sure you've been watching this quite closely.
03:50And I'm wondering what your thoughts are from a national security perspective here.
03:53Again, he was a high-ranking national security official.
03:58There's already been a case that has investigated whether or not he leaked these documents.
04:04What would be the purpose of this now in terms of, again, safeguarding America's intelligence?
04:11It's hard to see what the harm would be if it has to do with publication of a book that's already been wildly popular that people have read.
04:20And so in terms of are there national security secrets that I, as someone in the field, would be nervous about at this stage?
04:27It's a couple years later.
04:29If there was any harm, arguably, we would have known about it by now.
04:34I think the national security implications are twofold.
04:38One is clearly this is an intimidation tactic, that this is just something that, whether true or false, it is no surprise to anyone that it's John Bolton, a frequent critic of Trump.
04:50Trump is a frequent critic of his.
04:52And even if Trump didn't direct this investigation, certainly we know his people at the FBI, his leadership at the FBI, and Pam Bondi, the attorney general, certainly know what Trump wants.
05:05He may not have to direct it.
05:07And Trump almost said as much in his press conference this morning.
05:12The second is just the unreliable.
05:14I want to make this clear for our allies and for CNN International.
05:18The madness that seems to be surrounding national security right now with this giving and taking of security clearances, this sort of part of like what is the strategy with Ukraine, you know, the back and forth, all of it, right?
05:34And this now in terms of this unreliability of what used to be viewed as a relatively stable national security apparatus in the United States.
05:45We did not used to have this, of Democrats and Republicans would serve presidents in different terms, career civil servants would not have their national security clearances taken away, as we've seen Tulsi Gabbard, the head of our intelligence, do.
06:01And that, I think, from the what does this mean for the United States, that's my biggest worry, is we look unstable as a security apparatus.
06:13And that is because of moves like this by the Trump administration.
06:17Yeah, and you point out that all of these moves, you said it before, it takes resources, and those resources may be taken away from other files that are of critical importance here.
06:27You mentioned the FBI director, Kash Patel.
06:29He did put out a statement on social media almost as the FBI was arriving at that house that you see right there.
06:35He said no one is above the law, FBI agents on mission.
06:38Juliet, though, reviewers will remember, the president just mentioned it himself last hour.
06:43His home, Mar-a-Lago, was also searched.
06:46Joe Biden's home was also searched.
06:50There is precedent here in terms of really trying to assure that national security documents, national security secrets are held as they should be.
07:01Yeah, and that's why I think both of us right now are sort of like, we haven't seen the elements of what it is that they're alleging.
07:13But I will say this, if you're the Trump administration, you would probably want to put your best foot forward at this stage,
07:19knowing that people would be skeptical of an indictment or an investigation of John Bolton, given how much we know the president has weaponized it.
07:29And nothing I have seen so far would suggest there was anything new or pressing in the allegations.
07:38This is a couple years old book.
07:40It was a closed investigation.
07:42He had gotten authority and approval to publish the book.
07:46Look, I want to say one thing.
07:47People make mistakes, too.
07:48Let's just assume something happened where John Bolton made a mistake and maybe he took a file or is still in possession of a file he shouldn't be.
07:56You would, in most instances, especially for a national security advisor, you would call them and say, what about this document?
08:04And generally they would say, oops, I have this document.
08:06And there wouldn't be a televised FBI raid hinted by the FBI director in the moments after for TVs to see.
08:17I mean, this is done in daylight for a reason.
08:21And so the performative nature of this allows me and others who certainly, you know, we weren't born yesterday, to raise healthy skepticism about the merits, the objectivity, and the strength of whatever case the administration is going to come up with.
08:40Yeah, and to make a fine point of it, it must be chilling in the sense of anyone thinking of serving at this level, right?
08:47I mean, Juliette, I look at you.
08:48If someone called you back into government right now, what would you say at this point?
08:52Well, I mean, you know, part of it is just your tolerance level for something like this.
08:59We've all, I mean, all of us on TV are constantly attacked about, you know, what we say and our children are mentioned online.
09:06And we've all changed the way that we, you know, I don't put my kids anywhere, things like that, that you're learning in terms of what it means to be in this world.
09:18But I think that that is the long-term consequences of this, is that you're going to get people who now view going into national security or intelligence akin to running for office.
09:29Well, there's a reason why they chose not to run for office is because they want to speak about the public scrutiny.
09:36And I think that that will change.
09:38And you're kind of seeing it already.
09:41I mean, the FBI has already admitted it's lowering its standards for new people coming in.
09:46And ICE is paying people to join ICE.
09:49That's our immigration agency.
09:51I mean, you're starting to see the impact of attacks on civil servants and career servants in the safety and security space.
10:00Joey Jackson, in terms of the legal issues here, we heard Evan Perez say that, look, this investigation before about his book did continue.
10:09But he, John Bolton, submitted this book to national security officials.
10:13Apparently, there was a discrepancy as to whether or not it was actually cleared.
10:17Joey, do you believe that they would have had to show new information, new credible information on this issue in order to even get permission to search these two properties?
10:28So, Paula, in normal times, I would say yes to that.
10:32We are not in normal times.
10:34And what do I mean by that?
10:36You know, we have a situation where you have the head of the FBI tweeting, right?
10:41We haven't seen that before.
10:43And although he didn't mention Bolton by name, it certainly was of and concerning him.
10:47There's this doctrine of law called of and concerning.
10:50And so I was on CNN International.
10:53The time was 2-19.
10:55This gentleman was on, well, you may not call me a gentleman, but it was 2-19, and et cetera.
11:00But the point I'm making, right, and I was with someone else who was an esteemed national security expert.
11:06You don't have to mention Julia Kayan.
11:07You don't have to mention me.
11:08We know who you're talking about.
11:10Then you have the vice president that's retweeting it, that smacks of politics.
11:14That's a problem.
11:16Why do I say that?
11:17Because, generally speaking, when you have investigations, they're insulated.
11:20Everything's done above board.
11:22You're not looking to mug for the cameras so that everyone could be seeing an actual search go through and an embarrassment and the humiliation associated with it.
11:30And, by the way, he happens to be a critic of the president, a major critic, and he was fired about six years ago in September of 2019.
11:39And so this just smacks of just political, right, just political gamesmanship and retribution against the enemies.
11:46Now, again, a lot we don't know.
11:48Potentially there is new information.
11:50Potentially they brought that information to a judge, or maybe they're being overly cautious, and there's some kind of new-founded, really, focus on national security information.
12:00And we should hasten to add they looked into Biden as well.
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