The FBI raids the home of former Trump adviser John Bolton.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 14 minutes.

Your questions and criticism.

We got a slew of questions and criticisms in response to the video we published on our 72 hours with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA). Readers asked how our time with him was actually set up, if we saw him spend any time fundraising, if we have plans to do more videos like it and if we just provided “free bogus publicity,” among other things. On Friday, we responded to your feedback in a members-only edition. 

Quick hits.

1. The Pentagon has reportedly been planning a military deployment to Chicago for weeks, with options including mobilizing thousands of National Guard members. On Friday, President Donald Trump suggested he would turn his focus to the city imminently. (The report)
2. U.S. immigration officials said they plan to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica. Abrego Garcia was erroneously imprisoned in El Salvador in March, then returned to the U.S. in June following a court order. (The latest)
3. A New York appeals court threw out an approximately $500 million fine in a civil judgment against President Donald Trump, finding the penalty was “excessive.” The court left in place a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud. (The ruling)
4. Canada removed many of its counter-tariffs imposed on the United States in response to sweeping U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports. However, Canada’s 25% duties on U.S. automobiles, steel, and aluminum will remain in place. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he hopes the move will help facilitate a trade deal between the countries. (The tariffs)
5. President Trump announced the U.S. government would take a 10% stake in the computer technology company Intel via a conversion of $8.9 billion in previously awarded federal grants. (The announcement, and Tangle’s coverage)

Today’s topic.

The John Bolton investigation. On Friday, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, D.C. office of John Bolton, former national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term. According to a senior U.S. official, the search was connected to an investigation into Bolton’s possible use of a private email server to share classified documents with his wife and daughter while he was working in the White House. Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crimes. 

Back up: Bolton served as President Trump’s third national security adviser from 2018–2019. During his tenure, Bolton diverged from the president on several key national security issues, most notably by suggesting more aggressive postures toward Iran and North Korea. Bolton has a long-standing reputation as a strong proponent of hawkish foreign policies, including backing the Iraq War when he served as United States ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. 

President Trump announced he had fired Bolton in September 2019 (Bolton said he resigned), after which Bolton wrote a memoir on his time in the White House that harshly criticized the president. At the time, the Trump White House attempted to block publication of Bolton’s memoir, citing a National Security Council official review that found the manuscript contained “significant amounts of classified information.” The Biden administration ended a Justice Department lawsuit and probe into the book in 2021.

A federal magistrate judge in Maryland authorized the search of Bolton’s home, while a different federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. signed off on the office search. Investigators must present evidence of probable cause of a violation of federal law to obtain such warrants. 

On Friday, Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the administration was in “the very early stages” of an investigation into Bolton, adding that “if [the Justice Department] ultimately bring[s] a case, it will be because they determine that he has broken the law.” Vance rejected the notion that Bolton was targeted because of his criticism of the president. 

Separately, President Trump suggested that he did not have advance notice of the plan to raid Bolton’s home and office, but spoke critically about his former adviser, telling reporters, “I’m not a fan of John Bolton, I thought he was a sleazebag actually. He suffers major Trump derangement syndrome.” The president added that he “know[s] the feeling” of having his home raided, referring to the 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Shortly after the raid began, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X, “NO ONE is above the law…@FBI agents on mission,” and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino posted, “Public corruption will not be tolerated.” The agency has not shared details on the outcome of the search, but several outlets reported that it was related to a criminal investigation that began during the Biden administration but was not pursued further. 

Some Democrats suggested that Bolton was targeted for political reasons. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “The timing of this is very suspicious, and the fact that DOJ investigated him previously and found nothing to charge him with just tells you that I suspect that they know that even if they don’t have anything, they’re embarrassing him and they’re bringing great cost upon him.”

Today, we’ll share reactions from the left and right to the raid on Bolton’s home and office. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left strongly criticizes the raids, calling them clear political vengeance.
• Some worry that Trump will target other political adversaries in this way.
• Others say the administration is not hiding that retribution is its goal. 

The New York Times editorial board wrote “Trump gets his revenge on John Bolton. Who’s next?”

“Less than 12 hours after President Trump’s inauguration in January, he revoked the security detail protecting John Bolton, his former national security adviser turned critic, despite credible threats from Iran. Since then, Mr. Trump has repeatedly ridiculed Mr. Bolton on social media… On Friday morning, the intimidation ratcheted up several notches,” the board said. “It is too early to know what the F.B.I. will claim to find in all of those boxes but not too early to surmise that the search for incriminating documents was not the real goal of Friday’s search. Even if it turns up documents that should not be there, the administration has damaged any presumption of good faith by flinging weightless accusations of criminality at those who challenge it.”

“Mr. Trump seems convinced that he is doing nothing to his rivals that was not done to him in earlier prosecutions and lawsuits. That is untrue. There is little comparison between the substantial evidence amassed in his cases — in particular, that he tried to break the nation’s election laws in 2020 and refused to return classified White House documents — and the frequent lack of evidence lobbed at his adversaries,” the board wrote. “We do not pretend to know how any of these cases will turn out. But it is clear that Mr. Trump and his appointees are perverting the justice system to serve their political interests and intimidate their critics.”

In The Atlantic, Shane Harris suggested “the Bolton raid feels like a warning.”

“The FBI’s actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton’s years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That’s the problem with a politicized legal system — even if an investigation is legitimate, it’s easy to assume that its motives are corrupt,” Harris said. “Chilling effect is too mild, though revoking the security clearances of two senior intelligence officers, as Gabbard did, effectively ending their government careers, will indeed send a message. Terrorizing the workforce is a phrase I heard a lot this week. And that may indeed be the point.”

“It’s possible some new evidence of a potential crime has emerged, leading to today’s FBI raid. But the administration’s hostility toward Bolton is well known, and Trump has made no secret of the fact that, seeing himself as the victim of political prosecutions during the Biden years, he is eager to turn the tables on perceived enemies,” Harris wrote. “There are still officials working in the government who took part in the 2016 efforts to counter Russia. Has the White House overlooked them? Are they next on the list to be purged? Everyone is left to wonder. But no one thinks that the president’s retribution campaign is anywhere near its end.”

In CNN, Aaron Blake said the “Trump team keeps giving away the game on its retribution crusade.”

“One of the problems with assessing President Donald Trump’s legal retribution campaign against his foes is the many things we don’t know. We don’t know, for example, what evidence the administration actually has against all these people,” Blake wrote. “The fact that it has now launched investigations into key figures involved in every major probe of Trump sure suggests that this is about retaliation. And its attempts to turn these investigations into public spectacles really give away the game — as was seen most recently on Friday morning as the FBI was searching the home of former Trump national security-adviser-turned-critic John Bolton.

“Over and over again, the administration has not just probed Trump critics, but it’s made a show of it – often in ways that run afoul of legal ethics. Those ethics rules hold that prosecutors and investigators should not seed unwarranted suspicion of people. They should instead speak through legal filings and keep their public comments to a minimum. The idea is that the legal process is not used to impugn people whom the government doesn’t have the goods on,” Blake said. “But the Trump administration has obliterated that norm. That raises the prospect that these people are not necessarily being targeted for prosecution, but for a public shaming and to send a message to others.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the searches, but some decry a double standard in how the left reacted to investigations into Trump compared to Bolton.
• Others say the raids appear to be part of a political vendetta.
• Still others say key questions remain unanswered about the basis for the raids.

In PJ Media, Matt Margolis wrote “accountability is not weaponization.”

“When Trump was on the receiving end of this full-on government assault, the left called it justice. But now that accountability is being aimed at those who abused their own positions, the media has rediscovered words such as ‘dangerous,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and, of course, ‘authoritarian,’” Margolis said. “Bolton, of all people — once hailed by the left as a brave truth-teller when he turned on Trump — is now portrayed as a martyr for democracy. The very same networks that applauded the FBI storming Mar-a-Lago now treat the search of Bolton’s home and office as an abuse of power.”

“Why is it acceptable for Democrats, with the full backing of the media, to hurl the justice system at Trump, yet somehow it is outrageous that Trump goes after those who very clearly crossed legal and ethical lines?” Margolis wrote. “Trump’s critics want to play both sides — justice is sacred when Trump is the target, but it’s a threat to democracy when Democrats are. They can’t have it both ways. If ‘no one is above the law,’ then no one is above the law. And if Democrats who waged war on Trump are finally being forced to answer for what they did, that’s not the collapse of democracy. That’s what accountability looks like.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board said “Trump’s vendetta campaign targets John Bolton.”

“President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term,” the board wrote. “It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.”

“Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained,” the board said. “The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.”

In The Washington Examiner, Tom Rogan explored “the questions that need answering over John Bolton FBI raid.”

“[The] raid would have been authorized by a federal judge’s signature on a search warrant. But we now need more information on why the investigation was dropped by the Biden administration. Was it as a political favor to Bolton over his criticism of Trump? Or was it because Justice Department attorneys in the national security division believed there was insufficient evidence to bring charges? If it is the latter possibility, then we must ask what changed between then and now,” Rogan wrote. “The fear, or should-be-fear, is that Trump is weaponizing the DOJ against his political enemies.

“Numerous former officials from the former Trump administration, whom Trump perceives as too critical of him, had their government security details withdrawn shortly after Trump reentered office. That included Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley,” Rogan said. “If there is a new cause or information suggesting that Bolton did indeed mishandle classified information and was given undue political cover from the Biden administration, this FBI activity would appear legitimate. But it is absurd for senior Trump law enforcement and DOJ officials to insist that they are always applying the rule of law without any partisan considerations.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• On these kinds of investigations, I’ve been promoting a “prosecute them all” principle.
• Trump was investigated for good reason, even if it gave him personal reasons to act vindictively.
• Two judges authorized the Bolton searches, so I want to see what evidence the DOJ has against him.

In the last few years, I began subscribing to a “prosecute them all” mentality.

I was moved by the arguments of writers like Jonathan Katz, who made the case that it’s a good thing if the powerful believed they would face accountability. That applies to President Trump, who was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents and trying to overthrow an election (among other cases); it applies to Bill Clinton, who has been credibly accused of rape; it applies to Hillary Clinton, who mishandled classified documents; and it applies to Barack Obama and George W. Bush, whom many people want to see prosecuted for war crimes. No one is above the law, all the way up to the president, despite how disruptive holding them accountable can be.

Of course, it’s easy to hold this principle in a vacuum; it’s harder to hold it in the real world, where even legitimate prosecutions can compel political reaction, especially when they end without convictions. 

I have a hard time shedding any tears for John Bolton — a certified warmonger who has regularly ensured that U.S. diplomatic efforts fail in favor of exercising military strength. He is a prototypical swamp creature who has done untold amounts of damage from an untouchable perch in Washington, D.C. During his 17-month stint as national security adviser in Trump’s first term, Bolton helped tank diplomacy that could have led to disarming North Korea, publicly called for regime change in Venezuela, and nearly sent us into an all-out war with Iran (just a few years after his New York Times op-ed “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”).  

These aren’t crimes, of course. An infatuation with war is not the same as being guilty of mishandling classified information. Bolton’s hawkish advocacy is only evidence of how someone can be consistently and dangerously wrong and fail forward in our nation’s capital. Which is all just to say: I may not want Bolton anywhere near the White House, but I’d also like to see some evidence that he deserved to have his home raided by the FBI.

Many of Trump’s supporters are now justifying the raid against Bolton without suggesting any criminality on Bolton’s part, but instead adopting a “the swamp came for Trump, now Trump’s coming for them” mentality.

This reaction to the Bolton raid is omnipresent in pro-Trump circles, and a fear of tit-for-tat reprisals was a valid concern when the DOJ began prosecuting Trump under Biden. It’s also a valid counterargument to the “prosecute them all” approach. Whether or not you believed Trump deserved to face various criminal charges, the genie was out of the bottle — and the repercussions of crossing the Rubicon were easy to anticipate but impossible to fully predict. To me, this was not a reason to drop the Trump cases but a reason to ensure any charges brought against him would be airtight, because opening the door to the appearance of political persecution would do untold long-term damage to our institutions and faith in our legal system. Quite unfortunately, the charges were often far from airtight. 

At the same time, even an airtight investigation could have taken us across the Rubicon. When the FBI raided Trump’s home over his handling of classified documents, we immediately saw substantial evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The evidence in the indictment was damning, showing that Trump was likely guilty of mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct an investigation that would have landed most people in jail. Trump’s missteps appeared more egregious than anything Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden (who were both investigated) were accused of, making the DOJ’s pursuit against him accordingly more serious. We can have a robust debate about whether a former president should go to jail or face serious criminal charges for such crimes, and the can of worms that kind of pursuit opens, but we can’t pretend Trump was obviously innocent. 

Fortunately for Trump, his classified documents case landed before an unusually friendly judge in Florida, whom he appointed. (The investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election was also rife with publicly available evidence of his wrongdoing, though determining the criminality of those actions would have been much thornier and more difficult for me to weigh in on from the sidelines without a trial.)

Now, is the investigation into Bolton simply retribution for his public break with Trump, or is it also airtight? We don’t know. We have no evidence (yet) to assess; the DOJ hasn’t even announced specific allegations beyond reports alluding to mishandling of classified information. Trump is harboring an obvious political grudge against Bolton, one that started with revoking his security clearance and security detail immediately after his inauguration (even though credible threats against Bolton’s life have been publicly reported). 

I’ve written a lot about the ways Trump 2.0 is similar to Trump 1.0, but the biggest difference between Trump’s second term and his first term is how much this one seems motivated by revenge. Here’s one of the concerns I voiced following Trump’s re-election in 2024: “He's vindictive, aging, and unbound by any need to get re-elected. He’s easily consumed by grievance and his campaign is staffed with charlatans — and if he’s surrounded by yes men affirming his worst instincts, we could be in for some very scary times.” Part of Trump’s appeal in 2016 was his campaign for the forgotten men and women of America; whether you believed him or not, he grew enormously popular because he was focusing on the grievances of a class of people now so regularly ignored. 

In 2024, Trump’s campaign was all about his personal enemies and what “they” did to him — and Bolton is one of the people Trump loathed. It's impossible not to immediately think this raid is an example of Trump getting his revenge, rather than any genuine legal concern about how classified information was handled. If it’s both true that Trump is seeking revenge and that the DOJ has evidence Bolton broke the law, I’d rather see him prosecuted than not; if it’s only true that Trump is seeking revenge, then we have our latest evidence of Trump pursuing an authoritarian-style presidency. 

Yet for all the talk of this being creeping authoritarianism or a personal vendetta, a federal judge in Maryland signed off on the search at Bolton’s home, and a separate federal magistrate judge authorized the search of his downtown office. Now, depending on your level of skepticism toward the government and our legal system, this could mean a lot or a little. To me, it suggests there is probably a decent amount of evidence (that we haven’t seen yet) showing Bolton did something wrong. The search is obviously extremely sensitive and politically charged, and that the Trump administration could get two separate judges to authorize raids against this backdrop is, to me, pretty reassuring. It’s not as if Bolton is squeaky clean on these matters, either; his memoir raised some serious red flags, and a federal judge who reviewed the evidence in 2020 believed he disclosed classified information in his manuscript while violating a nondisclosure agreement.

So: Just as we shouldn’t presume that Bolton is guilty of a crime until seeing the evidence, we shouldn’t presume Trump is guilty of a political hit job until seeing the evidence. Without an indictment, and the evidence supporting it, we’re left with little more than presumptions. Seeing Bolton’s home get raided certainly got my attention, but I’m going to reserve as much judgment as I can until I have more information — and so should everyone else. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: What are the facts regarding the US sending the military to the coast of Venezuela? Also, how much of the $10 billion reward for Maduro is funded by the USA?

— JP from Hattiesburg, MS

Tangle: Here are the basic facts: The U.S. State Department announced on August 7 that it is offering up to $50 million (far less than $10 billion) for “information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for violating U.S. narcotics laws,” an increase from its previous $25 million bounty. The federal government would pay all the reward money offered by the State Department. Simultaneously, an unnamed Department of Defense official told the Associated Press that the Navy will deploy three destroyers to the waters off the coast of Venezuela over the course of the next several months. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi has called Maduro a “narco-terrorist,” adding that the Drug Enforcement Agency “has seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, with nearly seven tons linked to Maduro himself.” President Trump has cited the need to stop the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the United States through Latin American cartels.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil called the announcement “pathetic,” and Maduro called on Venezuelans to enlist in the militia to respond to the military threat. Maduro was re-elected in 2024, following hyperinflation and mass migration out of the country during his first term; then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had “serious concerns” about the fairness of the election, and the U.S. has still not recognized Maduro as the winner. As inflation continues to surge, Maduro’s government has begun detaining economists who report on the worsening figures.

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Under the radar.

On Saturday, postal services in Europe announced they will be suspending some shipments to the United States after an exemption on tariff duties for low-value packages entering the U.S. ended. This “de minimis” exemption had allowed packages worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. without facing tariffs. Ahead of the exemption’s expiration, shipping providers expressed confusion over how the newly imposed duties will be collected. Postal services in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Italy said they will stop shipping most merchandise to the U.S. immediately, while France and Austria plan to do the same on Monday. The Associated Press has the story.

Numbers.

• 17. The approximate number of months that John Bolton served as national security adviser in the first Trump administration. 
• 4. The number of national security advisers in the first Trump administration (not including interim advisers).  
• 29. The number of national security advisers (not including interim advisers) since the first was appointed in 1953. 
• 608. The length, in pages, of Bolton’s 2020 memoir on his time in the first Trump administration. 
• 780,000. The approximate combined sales of Bolton’s book in its first week, according to Simon & Schuster. 
• 7:00 AM ET. The approximate time on Friday, August 22 that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents began their search of Bolton’s home.
• 7:32 AM ET. The time on Friday, August 22 that Bolton’s X account published a post criticizing President Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published Isaac’s 28 thoughts on the Democratic National Convention.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the impromptu jazz performance on a delayed flight.
• Nothing to do with politics: Take a walk through digital history in the web design museum.
• Thursday’s survey: 2,060 readers responded to our survey on the government owning shares of Intel with 70% opposed to the plan. “I am surprised more on the right aren't outraged,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

According to results from Gallup, more people across the world are living better lives and expressing optimism than ever before. Since 2007, Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index has tracked how many people say they are thriving or suffering; for the 2024 survey, 33% of respondents said they were thriving (a record high) while only 7% said they were suffering (a record low). The rise coincides with increases in other related metrics — like the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures national life expectancy, years of schooling and living standards, and is also at an all-time high. Gallup has the story.

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