Bolton raid is vengeful Trump weaponising justice to crush his foes

Twice impeached and the first former president convicted of a crime, Donald Trump campaigned openly on the promise of "retribution" against his political opponents.

- Hugh Tomlinson

On the stump last year, he raged ominously against the threat to the US, not from Russia or China, but "the enemy from within".

But Friday’s raid on the Maryland home of John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, marks another line crossed in the president's use of law enforcement to target his political enemies.

Bolton, who fell out with Trump during his first term and was fired in 2019 after a string of clashes over his hawkish stance on Iran and North Korea, has remained a trenchant critic of his former boss.

In television appearances over recent weeks he has accused Trump of kowtowing to Vladimir Putin in his attempt to end the war in Ukraine and derided the President's obsession with winning the Nobel peace prize. The dawn raid by the FBI marks a dramatic escalation in the pair’s war of words and sends a clear warning to other Trump critics.

The pictures of FBI agents carting away boxes while Bolton's wife, Gretchen, stood on the doorstep in a dressing gown, underscored the intimidating power of the US government and of Trump's fixation with revenge on those who wronged or betrayed him, particularly on primetime television.