At face value, the circumstances surrounding the FBI search of John Bolton’s home and office appear difficult to defend. The former White House national security adviser is, after all, a prominent Donald Trump critic, who was on the receiving end of public presidential criticisms just days ahead of the search, and who appeared on an “enemies list” prepared by the FBI’s hyperpartisan director.
As Norm Eisen and Andrew Warren wrote in a new piece for MSNBC: “The early-morning knock on Bolton’s door should be a wake-up call to every American. This escalation in the Trump administration’s use of law enforcement to target political opposition marks a dangerous new front for American authoritarianism.”
With this in mind, the White House has an incentive to at least try to keep up appearances, putting at least some superficial distance between the Oval Office and the federal investigation into one of the president’s top political foes.
There are some early indications, however, that Team Trump isn’t overly concerned with the pretense.
On Friday morning, for example, the president initially told reporters that he didn’t know anything about the case against Bolton, before suggesting that he was hardly in the dark.
“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out.” For good measure, he proceeded to call his former White House national security adviser “a sleazebag.”
In case that weren’t quite enough, the president said he wasn’t directly responsible for what he described as the FBI’s “raid” on Bolton’s home and office, but he added: “I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer.”
Around the same time, his vice president went a bit further. Politico reported:
Vice President JD Vance is defending the federal government’s investigation into former national security adviser John Bolton, as Democrats slam the FBI’s search of his home last Friday as a politically targeted attack. But Vance also made it clear he couldn’t say what Bolton might have done.
It would’ve been very easy for the Ohio Republican, a graduate of Yale Law School, to wave off questions about the Bolton case, saying something like, “All questions about ongoing federal investigations should be directed to the Justice Department, since the White House is not involved in the matter.”
Except, that’s not at all what Vance said.
JD Vance: "We're in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton … if we think Ambassador Bolton committed a crime, of course eventually prosecutions will come … there's a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton." “We’re in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton,” Vance said during an appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” failing to explain who “we” are in this context. “I will say we’re going to let that investigation proceed. … We are investigating Ambassador Bolton.” Vance added that he thinks “there’s a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton,” again failing to note who has such “concerns” and why. When host Kristen Welker specifically asked whether the administration was engaging in retribution against a critic, the vice president said: “Well, who has said it looks a lot like retribution, Kristen? A lot of people who tried to throw Donald Trump in prison for completely fake charges.” First, if Vance is looking for people who believe this looks a lot like retribution, the list is not short. Second, while it’s true that Trump faced dozens of state and federal criminal charges, to date, none of them have been discredited as “fake.” But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: The vice president suggested to a national television audience that the White House is involved in a Justice Department investigation into a presidential critic, which is every bit as radical as it sounds.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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