John Boltons home raided by federal agents
Fox News' David Spunt provides details on the FBI raid at former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton's home in Maryland as FBI Director Kash Patel tweets, NO ONE is above the law.
FBI agents raided the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday morning, Fox News Digital has learned.
Fox News Digital later spotted agents at Bolton's Washington, D.C., office removing boxes and Bolton was seen in the lobby of the building.
The searches are focused on potential classified documents agents believe Bolton may still possess, according to one source.
Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, is not in custody or under arrest. Trump said he was not aware of the raid ahead of time and said he found out about it on the news.
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Federal agents raided the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday morning, according to two senior government enforcement sources briefed on the matter. (STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Federal agents reportedly busted into Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Maryland, at around 7 a.m. local time in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, who took to X with a cryptic post minutes later.
"NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission," he wrote without directly referencing the raid.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino shared the post and wrote, "Public corruption will not be tolerated."
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi also warned, "America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always."
WATCH: FBI agents load boxes into a car after searching John Bolton's DC office
Trump told reporters he saw the raid on television Friday morning and said he did not know any details about the investigation.
"He's not a smart guy, but he could be very unpatriotic," Trump said. "I mean, we're going to find out. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning."
CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided Patel with limited access to U.S. intelligence that served as the basis for the search warrant, a source familiar with the Bolton raid and the evidence used to justify it told Fox News Digital.
"I can’t give you any more details than that, but let’s just say that John Bolton really had some nerve to attack Trump over his handling of classified information," the source told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital called Bolton’s office for comment. A staffer answered, said, "Have a nice day," and then hung up.
FBI agents outside the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Aug. 22, 2025. (Fox News Digital)
The probe into classified documents was first launched years ago but later shut down by the Biden administration "for political reasons," according to a senior U.S. official.
The Justice Department under Trump’s first administration argued that Bolton’s 2020 memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," contained classified material and sought to block its publication. A federal judge ultimately allowed the book to be published.
Justice Department lawyers argued the book contained classified national security information covering areas like U.S. intelligence sources and methods, foreign policy deliberations and conversations with foreign leaders.
In June 2021, the Biden Justice Department abandoned both a criminal inquiry and civil lawsuit against Bolton over the memoir, ending the legal battle at that time.
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Bolton's attorney said at the time that a senior career official in charge of the NSC’s prepublication review process conducted a four-month prepublication review of the book and, after requiring a number of revisions, concluded that it contained no classified information.
The book contained a damning account of the Trump White House, alleging that Trump once "pleaded" with Chinese President Xi Jinping to aid his re-election campaign, among other missteps.
Trump ousted Bolton from his first administration in 2019 because they "disagreed strongly" on policy.
Bolton has both praised and criticized Trump since leaving his first administration.
Then-national security advisor John Bolton listens as President Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands in the Oval Office at the White House on July 18, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
He criticized Trump’s handling of classified documents, which led to an FBI raid on the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 and a subsequent federal indictment, but insisted that "the legal process play out."
Trump was initially indicted on 37 felony counts, later expanded to 40, but the case was ultimately dismissed in July 2024.
In 2022, Bolton said Trump lacked the competence and character to be president.
However, Bolton strongly backed Trump’s military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, calling it "a decisive action," "the right thing to do," and praising its potential to generate "huge change in the Middle East."
Trump, meanwhile, has often criticized Bolton for pushing U.S. involvement in wars in the Middle East. Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush from August 2005 to December 2006.
WATCH: John Bolton departs D.C. office as FBI agents load boxes in documents probe
"I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real, sort of low-life," Trump said Friday before adding that Bolton served a useful purpose in his administration because foreign leaders feared him.
"He was one of the people who forced Bush to do the ridiculous bombings in the Middle East. And he always wants to kill people."
Trump added, "And he’s very bad at what he does … I’d walk into a room with him, with a foreign country would give me everything because they said, oh no, they’re going to get blown up because John Bolton was there."
Trump revoked Bolton's Secret Service detail the day after Trump's inauguration as the 47th president and Bolton said the move showed that Trump was coming after him.
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"I think it is a retribution presidency," Bolton told ABC earlier this month in relation to the stripping of his Secret Service protection.
Bolton has faced threats from Iran going back years, including an alleged plot to assassinate him in 2021 and the Department of Justice subsequently charging a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the plot in 2022.
The Iranian threats against Bolton were likely sparked by the January 2020 U.S. strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, the Department of Justice reported in 2022.
Montgomery County police block a road near the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton during an FBI search on Aug. 22, 2025. (Fox News Digital)
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