McCabe: ‘All Kinds of Reasons’ to Think John Bolton Home Raid Is Political

BOLDUAN: “And as Katelyn continues to dig, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andy McCabe, is back with us. Andy, thanks for jumping back on. Your reaction to this news, a court-authorized FBI raid of John Bolton‘s home?”
McCabe: “Yeah, well, it‘s really stunning. I mean, I don‘t think — I don‘t think many people saw this one coming, but — so let‘s level set exactly why the FBI is here now. Of course, we don‘t have the substance of what it is they‘re investigating. But we do know that if they‘re at his home, they have to have a federal search warrant, which means they went in front of a federal court, a U.S. judge, and presented probable cause that evidence of a crime exists in that location. There‘s absolutely nothing, I think, publicly known about allegations of criminal activity against John Bolton. We know he‘s been involved in disputes with the former Trump Administration over whether or not he had, you know, improperly had classified information in his book, so I think that‘s logically something that I think people think of as a possibility here, but we really don‘t know yet because we haven‘t and likely will not see the affidavit that supports that search warrant. Typically, those affidavits are not made public until after, and only if, someone is charged publicly and indicted.”
BOLDUAN: “And Andy, I mean, to remind, I mean, anyone who watches the program will know this very clearly because, I mean, Bolton was on just this week talking to us, that since he has left the administration, in the book that he wrote about the first Trump Administration called ‘The Room Where It Happened’ and since, he has been a very vocal critic of the president and his policies, kind of up and down. And he — and Donald Trump has gone after John Bolton on social media many a time. So there is quite a bit of animosity between these two people outside of the work that they did together. What can — John Bolton was called by CNN and said that he‘s not entirely sure what‘s going on, and he was going to look into it himself. What do you expect is the first thing that we are going to learn about this, likely hearing it from Bolton himself, I assume?”
McCabe: “Well, yeah, I mean, I think it‘s — that‘s probably the likely first source of information. I have absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bolton will have very good counsel and they will attack this in a full-throated and complete way — as they should, right? So, we know that Mr. Bolton has said critical things about the president. That‘s not illegal. That‘s not a crime. That‘s pretty squarely within your First Amendment right in this country. In fact, you shouldn‘t be, you‘re not supposed to be — the Department of Justice and the FBI have all kinds of policies absolutely prohibiting investigating people for the exercise of their First Amendment rights. And so if that‘s what‘s going on here, and there‘s all kinds of reasons to believe that that might be the true motivation, we know that the president has embarked on a pretty extensive effort to go after his perceived enemies, to, you know, these revenge tours — “
BOLDUAN: “He said he was running a retribution. Yeah.”
McCabe: “That’s right. ‘I am your retribution’ is what he told his supporters. So there‘s all kinds of reasons, I think, to think — to look at this with a jaundiced eye and to be aware of the fact that there is more than just the probable cause articulated in this search warrant. There is this very fraught relationship between the two, and the president‘s history of going after people, using the levers of power that he has access to, particularly the Department of Justice, to go after people he doesn‘t like.”