When federal agents armed with a search warrant showed up at John R. Bolton’s home outside Washington at dawn on Friday, it was a display of one of the government’s most intimidating powers, in this case deployed against a fierce and high-profile critic of President Trump.
It is not yet clear what evidence the Justice Department cited in convincing a federal judge to sign off on the search warrant, or what culpability Mr. Bolton might have in an on-and-off investigation into whether he mishandled classified information dating back to when he served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term.
But the episode illustrated how Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution has undercut the principle that law enforcement should keep a substantial distance from politics, stoking questions about whether even legitimate investigations are colored by the president’s insistence on putting his perceived enemies through the same treatment he faced as a target of multiple inquiries.
During the time Mr. Bolton worked in the first Trump administration, he helped put together plans that led to Mr. Trump ordering the killing of a top Iranian general. Because of Mr. Bolton’s role in those plans, there was intelligence showing that the Iranians wanted to kill him. To protect Mr. Bolton, the federal government provided him with a security detail throughout the Biden administration.
But just a day after being sworn in, Mr. Trump stripped Mr. Bolton of his security detail.
Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign has long focused on putting his perceived enemies through what he believes he unfairly endured as he was investigated, first by a special counsel during his first term and later by federal and state prosecutors during the Biden administration. In some ways, the search of Mr. Bolton’s home mirrors the F.B.I.’s 2022 search of Mr. Trump’s Florida home and private club, Mar-a-Lago, to retrieve classified documents he had kept and refused to return after leaving office.