Vice President JD Vance rejected the idea that the FBI’s home raid of Donald Trump’s former advisor John Bolton is the administration’s way of getting payback against Bolton for his criticisms of the president. The vice president explained that if that were the case, he would already have charges brought against him.
During a Friday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” Vance explained to Kristen Welker that Trump’s Department of Justice is in the “early stages” of an ongoing investigation into Bolton, which he claims is “driven by law and not by politics” and is in part a response to supposed classified documents Bolton has. He denies the notion that Bolton, a well-known critic of Trump, was any sort of target.
“No, not at all,” Vance said, after Welker noted that the Trump administration has revoked Bolton’s security clearance and secret service protection. “In fact, if we were trying to do that we would just throw out prosecutions willy nilly like the Biden administration’s DOJ did. Prosecutions that later got thrown out in court. If we bring a case, of course we haven’t done that yet, the Department of Justice has not done that yet, we’re investigating Ambassador Bolton. But if they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determined that he has broken the law.”
He added that the Trump camp plans to be “careful” but “deliberate” about their actions regarding Bolton.
“Because we don’t think that we should throw people— even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically, you shouldn’t throw people willy nilly in prison. You should let the law drive these determinations, and that’s what we’re doing.”
When Welker asked straight up, “is this retribution” against Bolton, mentioning that “a lot of people” speculate that it is, Vance, questioned the origin of those theories.
“Well, who has said it looks a lot like retribution, Kristen?” Vance asked. “A lot of people who try to throw Donald Trump in prison for completely fake charges that were later thrown out by multiple different courts. I suspect that if the media and the American people let this case actually unfold, let the investigation unfold as it’s currently doing, they’re going to find out that what we’re doing is being very deliberate and being very driven by the national interests and by the law here and that’s as it should be.”
Vance’s remarks came out on the same day Bolton’s home was raided. Bolton has not been charged nor detained, but the move reportedly is in regards to a “national security investigation in search of classified records,” according to NBC News.
Bolton served as an advisor during Trump’s first administration, but has since become a vocal critic of his former boss. He’s also worked as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a United States assistant attorney general in the past.
From Trump’s end, he told reporters he knew “nothing about” the raid and only “saw it this morning.”
“They’ll brief me, probably today sometime,” Trump said.
Both Fox and MSNBC hosts noted that Bolton’s federally funded security, which was put in place because the former national security advisor is under threat by Iran, was lifted once Trump took office. He has since had to pay for private security.
MSNBC’s justice and intel correspondent Ken Dilanian, meanwhile, suggested that the raid seemed to be part of Trump and the FBI’s attempts to “pursue Trump’s political enemies, though they don’t describe it that way.”
“Donald Trump’s law enforcement apparatus appears to be responding to his desire to re-litigate all of these issues where he thinks he was wronged by the intelligence community, and the justice department and the FBI,” he said. “It’s going in what a lot of people think is a dangerous direction.”
