As a matter of principle, we must fight injustice even when its victims are personally unsympathetic. And never has anyone fit that description more than John Bolton. Bolton has been for decades one of the most repulsive figures in the American foreign policy elite. He is almost entirely unworthy of support.

But count on Donald Trump, Bolton’s former employer and current nemesis, to find a way. After the events of the past week, Bolton can now reasonably be described as unfairly injured by the president’s vindictiveness.

Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser, from 2018 to 2019. His parting with the president was acrimonious, with Bolton claiming he quit while Trump insisted Bolton was fired. In 2020, the Trump White House unsuccessfully tried to stop the publication of Bolton’s scathing tell-all memoir. The legal case administration opened against Bolton was dropped when Joe Biden became president.

In a new edition of the memoir published in January, Bolton warned, “Trump really only cares about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.” He had good reason to fear Trump’s retaliatory impulses. One of Trump’s first acts as president in his second term was to remove Bolton’s Secret Service protection, despite the Justice Department’s assertions that the Iranian government was trying to kill him.

Current Issue

January 2026 Issue

But things escalated much further on Friday, when the FBI raided Bolton’s home and office looking for classified information, in what appears to be a resumption of the 2020 investigation.

The raid elicited a blistering editorial from The Wall Street Journal, which is often friendly to the Trump administration but also often features Bolton as a commentator. The editorial made a compelling case that this prosecution is motivated by presidential vengeance:

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.

His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton….

Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. [FBI Director Kash 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.

One reason the Bolton raid clearly seems politically motivated is that Trump has been quick to unleash the power of the presidency against other foes. The Associated Press has provided a partial list:

Trump’s team has opened investigations of Democrat Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued Trump’s company over alleged fraud for falsifying records, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who as a congressman led Trump’s first impeachment. The Republican administration has charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., over her actions at an immigration protest in Newark, New Jersey, after arresting Mayor Ras Baraka, also a Democrat. Under investigation, too, is former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a candidate for New York City mayor.

Those unjustly targeted by Trump are a motley crew, ranging from the noble to the mediocre to the repugnant. Bolton has to be counted as among the very worst, in part because he’s an advocate for an expansive view of presidential power that has given the green light to Trump’s current lawlessness.

Bolton was a prominent member of George W. Bush’s administration, serving as UN ambassador from 2005 to 2006 (Bush had to install him as a recess appointment since he was too unpleasant even for some Senate Republicans to vote for). Along with Dick Cheney, Bolton was an adherent to the idea of a “unitary” executive whose powers shouldn’t be curbed by judges or Congress.

In a 2015 essay in The Wall Street Journal, Bolton asserted that the “unitary presidency, not Congress” had the forcefulness necessary for “high statecraft.” The conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has described Bolton as a “hawk” who believes, “The default response to any challenge should be military escalation, the imposition of America’s will by force—and if one dangerous regime is succeeded by another, you just go in and kill the next round of bad guys, too.” Bolton has advocated for wars and regime change policies against many countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba.

What’s more, Bolton’s current persecution rests on two pillars he has supported his entire life: the imperial presidency and the ultra-paranoid national security state. One byproduct of this national security state is hyper-vigilant control of so-called government secrets. As I noted in an earlier column, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have fallen victim to the fact that the national security state uses security clearance as a tool of selective and politically motivated punishment. Now Bolton himself is again being targeted by the excessive rules surrounding the possession of classified documents.

So yes, Bolton has more than earned the hatred so many people have for him. But that still doesn’t mean that what Donald Trump is doing to him is right.

It does, however, mean that the system John Bolton helped make must be dismantled.

Trump’s abuse of power can only be checked by a rejection of the “unitary presidency” and the national security state’s paranoid bureaucracy. In practical terms, this means Congress has to resume its constitutional role as both a check on presidential power and also the only branch of government that can declare war.

The need to rein in the imperial presidency and Trump’s lawlessness is an issue that transcends partisan lines. Conservative lawyer Gregg Nunziata, who has worked as an adviser to Marco Rubio, tweeted, “It’s absolutely past time that the Senate Judiciary Committee conduct serious, bipartisan oversight of what appears to be outrageous corruption and degradation of the @TheJusticeDept and @FBI.”

It’s unlikely that John Bolton would support the reassertion of congressional authority, since he has been an ardent advocate of the imperial presidency for his entire life. But if Bolton is to be defended, it can only by attacking the bad policies he supported which have gotten him—and the rest of the United States—into this mess. The best way to defend John Bolton is to reject his hawkish worldview.