Trump’s 1-2-3 Punch Stuns Deep State; John Bolton’s Home Raided
By Hunter DeRensis
Late last month the Trump administration delivered a one-two-three punch to Deep State apparatchicks, a starting point in its clean-up program that has the corporate press clutching Pearls.
In the most bombastic demonstration of “what goes around comes around,” the FBI raided the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material. This was the same rationale given by the FBI during its raid on Donald’s Trump Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022, whose anniversary was just earlier this month. After holding mid-level positions in both the Ronald Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, John Bolton made his bones as a high-profile conservative hawk during his longtime association with neoconservative vehicles like the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for a New American Century.
Four G Media Contributor Hunter DeRensis
During the W. Bush administration, he was known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s man in the State Department, keeping tabs on Secretary Colin Powell and using his position as Under Secretary for Arms Control to undermine international agreements like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from in 2002. Bolton proved a controversial ambassador to the United Nations, having been a recess appointment and never receiving Senate confirmation.
In April 2018, Trump appointed Bolton to be his national security advisor, overruling counsel from allies like Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and despite Bolton’s past criticism of MAGA.
Ironically, he remains Donald Trump’s longest serving national security advisor, and before his departure in September 2019, his tenure included the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal and sabotaging Trump’s high-wire negotiations with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.
The Washington Post editorial board commented, “The pursuit of 76-year-old Bolton underscores the danger of putting partisan hacks in top law enforcement jobs…It is a valid fear that the case against Bolton is a fresh instance of the old Soviet saying, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’ It comes against the backdrop of federal investigators looking for dirt on other Trump critics…”
It’s fairly rich for the corporate press to suddenly care about the politicization of justice in America. Needless to say, if the discomfort brought by a Justice Department microscope brings one-one millionth of the hardship John Bolton’s career has brought to tens of millions of people around the world, it’ll be a bare minimum of karma.
Less flashy but just as important is the announcement that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is cutting her staff by 50% and her agency’s budget by $700 million.
In Washington, size is power. Almost every department head, whatever their politics, quickly adopts the incentive to increase their budget, increase their staff, and increase their policy purview. This is an excellent demonstration that Gabbard, Iraq War veteran and former Democratic congresswoman, is ideologically serious about cutting down what has proven to be a rogue national security state.
This is precisely what worried opponents of Gabbard’s confirmation, whose contentiousness was rivaled only by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s. Democrats and establishment Republicans were anxious over her past opposition to FISA Section 702 and mass warrantless surveillance, and her support for pardoning Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who exposed widespread criminality on the part of the U.S. government.
Demonstrating the Democratic Party’s unanimous, current subservience to the Deep State, her confirmation was even opposed by Senator Ron Wyden (D-WA), who had previously built a whole legacy based around adherence to civil liberties, and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). (Gabbard resigned as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to endorse Sanders when it was revealed the party apparatus had its thumb on the scale during the presidential primaries. Witness the emptiness of Bernie Sanders’ personal character with how he repays his loyal friends).
Further, alarm bells are being rung because last Tuesday Gabbard revoked the security clearances of thirty-seven current and former intelligence professionals for, in her words,“politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.”
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none is an age-old American battlecry, used by Jacksonian Democrats and Progressive reformers like Robert La Follette alike. Security clearances are commonly exploited to boost the salaries of these intelligence professionals once they enter the private sector, and continue to raise their career profile long after they’ve served any conceivable use for the public.
They ought to be withdrawn as a matter of civic health; if they are guilty of leaking intelligence for political ends, all the better. They should not retain access to this information.
By organizing these stories to break in the same week, The White House put the Deep State on notice that prosecutions over past malfeasance, particularly centered around the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, are not only on the table, but could be coming in waves.
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