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Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy said Friday that President Donald Trump has an “ancient feud” with his former national security adviser John Bolton — and decried the FBI raid on Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland home.
Federal agents conducted the court-authorized search as part of a revived investigation into whether Bolton had mishandled classified records, according to multiple news reports. Bolton told CNN the search surprised him, and said he’s “looking into it further.”
“Well, you know, look, this is a very sad development,” McCarthy said Friday during an appearance on Fox News. “It’s one we’ve seen again and again, but this is an ancient feud. It’s all, I think, over Bolton’s book. Bolton went on a jihad against Trump after he got fired.
“There was major controversy over whether he had included classified information in the book, whether he had mishandled notes that he took at meetings, and stuff that ended up in his memoir,” he continued about Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”
McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, noted that the book was rather substantial and included “a lot of quotations” — and argued that these “must have been difficult to include from memory” alone.
Whether the raid was part of a longstanding personal grudge remains unclear, as Trump claimed Friday he wasn’t given advance notice of the 7 a.m. search, but also noted that he’s “not a fan” of Bolton — and called him an unpatriotic, war hawk “lowlife.”
Bolton’s role as national security adviser in the first Trump administration came to an end in 2019. Trump said at the time that he had fired Bolton, while Bolton claimed he actually resigned voluntarily. He’s been an outspoken Trump critic since.
The Department of Justice tried to block the book from being published during Trump’s first term in 2020, however, and launched a criminal investigation. The probe was closed in 2021 under then-President Joe Biden’s administration, but now appears to be reopening.
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press
While McCarthy has previously condemned Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots in Washington, D.C., he’s also accused former President Barack Obama and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of colluding to steal the 2016 election from him.
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On Friday, McCarthy accused Trump himself of engaging in so-called “lawfare.”
“I was hoping that his administration wouldn’t practice the things that were practiced on him, but a big part of lawfare is to harass people with investigations,” he said on Fox News. “So even if there are never any charges, there’s ... already been a search warrant.
“There’s obviously a criminal investigation that’s underway, there’ll probably be a grand jury component of it,” McCarthy continued. “And even if there’s no charges, this will be a very big deal for Bolton personally in the coming months, and maybe even years.”
English (US) ·