Link. It speaks for itself, including reader commentary. The cryptic MIHOP usage in the item title was explained within commentary as - Make It Happen On Purpose. Have a look.
___________________UPDATE_____________________
I am uncertain whether the theory spun out on EmptyWheel will turn out as the correct explanation.
The
EmptyWheel premise is that it's possible Bolton by motive and design
provoked things to, among other things gain discovery in litigation into
a host of executive actions and intentions and directions where
executive privilege assertions might need to be penetrated. Is he impetuous to have done that?
That
such
discovery and other sunshine on things would likely prove worthy by a
Bolton "I dare
you," but was it by dare or other circumstance that he became an FBI
search and investigation target? A target within a targeted sequence
where he was "first up" within a widespread Trump will for retribution?
Is there evidence for that being the situation? Perhaps this:
Bolton might not be a
reckless firebrand intent on doing some kind of deliberate provocation.
My
theory accords less recklessness to Bolton, with him unintentionally about to enter a
deep-pocketing litigation nightmare which he did not deliberately
provoke (while he may have foreseen it as possible but where his options
for a cashflow had been narrowed). For the
balance of Trump's term a government paycheck is nil. , Yet a need for a
cashflow to which he'd become accustomed remained. His security
clearance has been pulled so he is at risk if getting into too
much of a classified info morass with the clearance gone so with his job
pulled Bolton's government paycheck is gone, his
security clearance has been pulled, and he seems to be stuck becoming
one of
the host of news-show talking heads where his shtick would be
intellectually dumping on Trump and the Trump fellow-travellers, while
advocating a Bush neocon foreign policy and saying Trump has no policy
consistency or understanding so that his time with Trump was trying to
exist his own way with Trump's inconsistency being like life in a
pinball machine.
But again Bolton's shtick was going
intellectually nagative on Trump and his people. Chips falling where
they will. In that talking head capacity,
consider online content here and here. Going onto Substack may be next,
if not already done.
Bolton's government paycheck is gone, his
security clearance has been pulled, and he seems to be becoming one of
the host of TV news-show talking heads. Going onto Substack may be next,
if not already done. Yet in that complaining TV talking head capacity,
there's risk. Trump is a former TV performer noted as a TV freak content-consumer.
The heart of the Crabgrass theory is to consider two CNN talking head stints, here and here. Both are roughly 8 min segments. Short but hard hitting.
Analyzing
briefly those two particular YouTube items (posted to YouTube a month
apart) shows the basis of my best guess of why Bolton became FBI
litigation-retribution target No. 1.
Briefly, the segment titled, " 'Proved himself to be a lightweight': Bolton reacts to Hegseth on Signal chats" is a using an unsafe channel, Hegseth should be fired segment. Specificly - not a classified channel, and fire the bastard.
The segment titled, "John Bolton reacts to news of Trump officials texting war plans to reporter" was
more of the same, classified war planning that should have been in
person in a safe room, not on Signal, no one is above the law, and
they're not that smart but they simply should know better. Ripe for
holding up a mirror to Bolton when he was in Trump 45 if Bolton had been
at fault in any way then, himself.
So Trump watches and tells all who'd listen, "Get that Son of a Bitch." That's a guess. And now, he was got.
Murdoch's empire, Aug. 22, reported:
Kash Patel’s FBI raids John Bolton’s home, office in probe over sending classified documents to family
FBI agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, DC office of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton Friday
morning in a high-profile probe of allegations that he sent “highly
sensitive” classified documents to his family from a private email
server while working in the White House.
Federal investigators went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel,
a Trump administration official told The Post. Agents later went to
Bolton’s office in downtown DC, but did not enter until a judge signed a
warrant for that location late Friday morning.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
FBI agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, DC office of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton Friday
morning in a high-profile probe of allegations that he sent “highly
sensitive” classified documents to his family from a private email
server while working in the White House.
Federal investigators went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel,
a Trump administration official told The Post. Agents later went to
Bolton’s office in downtown DC, but did not enter until a judge signed a
warrant for that location late Friday morning.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
[,,,] “He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,”
President Trump told reporters of Bolton Friday morning. “We’re going to
find out.”
Investigators reopened a dormant probe into Bolton’s alleged use of a
private email to send classified national security documents to his
wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in
September 2019, according to a senior US official.
“While Bolton was a national security adviser, he was literally
stealing classified information, utilizing his family as a cutout,” this
person charged.
The probe was initially opened in 2020, and continued into the Biden administration, which froze the investigation.
Friday’s raid came at the behest of Patel, who reopened the matter after
he took over the FBI in February, the senior US official said.
The president told reporters at the White House that he had no advance knowledge of the operation.
“I know nothing about it,” Trump insisted. “I just saw it this
morning … I tell [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] and I tell the group: ‘I
don’t want to know, but you have to do what you have to do. I don’t
want to know about it.’”
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting — and I’m
actually the chief law enforcement officer — but I feel that it’s better
this way,” the president added.
It is not unusual for a president not to have been informed ahead of
an FBI raid. Traditionally, the Justice Department has worked
independently of the White House — especially on matters potentially
tied to domestic politics. For example, former President Joe Biden said
he was not given a heads-up about an August 2022 FBI raid of Trump’s
Mar-a-Lago estate to recover national security papers sought by the
National Archives.
The latest probe spawned out of a separate criminal inquiry into
Bolton from Trump’s first term over the ex-adviser’s alleged disclosure
of national secrets in his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened.”
Justice Department officials who also served during the Biden
administration purportedly told Trump officials that they had been
“trying to prosecute this case for four years, and the [Biden DOJ] shut
it down,” according to the senior official.
Investigators suspect the pause in the probe may have been motivated
by the ex-national security adviser’s public political opposition to
Trump.
Bolton has been at odds with his old boss since Trump fired
him, regularly appearing on CNN and criticizing the president’s national
security and foreign policy aims.
Trump,
79, unsuccessfully fought to quash publication of “The Room Where It
Happened” over its inclusion of national secrets — saying Bolton broke a
non-disclosure agreement signed as a condition of his employment.
Search warrants underpinning Friday’s raids — which have yet to be
unsealed — include references to the book controversy to convey a
pattern of behavior on Bolton’s part; however, the senior US official
described the probe as a “clean break” from the investigation over the
former White House official’s memoir.
“[Prosecutors] talk about the book [in the warrants] because it’s
good color for him already having essentially broken the law,” this
person said, “but we’re not prosecuting him for that … [it
has] absolutely 100% nothing to do with the book.”
“All these people have been wrapping their heads around an axle
about, ‘Oh, they’re really re-litigating the book?’” the official went
on, reacting to media speculation throughout the day Friday. “The book
investigation is over. Who gives a f—?”
Upon taking office Jan. 20, Trump terminated Bolton’s security clearance and Secret Service detail.
The move prompted concerns for the ex-adviser’s safety, with Iran
identifying Bolton as an assassination target in retribution for his
role in the January 2020 drone strike that took out Gen. Qassem
Soleimani.
Bolton, 76, has also been a vocal advocate of regime change in Iran throughout his diplomatic career.
Bolton’s X account blasted out a message at 7:32 a.m. — as FBI agents
were inside his home — criticizing Trump’s approach to Russia’s war on
Ukraine. It was unclear whether it was a scheduled post.
“Russia has not changed its goal: drag Ukraine into a new Russian
Empire. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine cede territory it already holds
and the remainder of Donetsk, which it has been unable to conquer.
Zelensky will never do so,” Bolton wrote.
“Meanwhile, meetings will continue because Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but I don’t see these talks making any progress.”
The Bolton raid comes one day after Patel revealed former FBI
Director James Comey had authorized leaks of classified documents “while
misleading Congress” just before the 2016 elections.
Patel has pledged to rid the federal government of corruption and
expose cover-ups, especially related to the FBI’s investigation of
collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
[intervening/interrupting
images omitted] There is a host of reporting of the Bolton retribution
situation, with Murdoch's reporting showing the Trump Administration is
telling a story that Trump did not initiate a vandetta to get Bolton but
somehow somebody said, "Hey remember this . . ." and Pam and Kash did
their own thing. That story line has a distinct strong miasma to it, of
an effort to deny Bolton a retributive litigation defense before he
might assert one, wanting discovery into whether so or not.
It
was not retributive, and the fall back is executive privilege, don't
quell our candor in discussions by poking your discovery-oriented nose
into what was "a non-event" anyway. Just justice as usual.
That's
got to be a crock, and pulling a Hillary-the-emails thing against Bolton
will discourage other former officials daring to be possible critics from speaking
out.
Given Murdoch's writing up the Trump story as best favors
Trump, discovery of who told Rupert and sons what when and how would
meet the counter, "media sources should not be revealed because it could quell candor
in giving media information to publish which the public should know."
All tied up in a pretty bow, and packaged to make Bolden spend and hurt in defense of himself.
Suffer John, to sing the blues against me, the Trump of the United States.
With
much online about the Bolton story, it was to Crabgrass a largely
ho-hum business as usual, Trump being a retribution-bent asshole,
nothing beyond that - but major hat-tip to EmptyWheel for jogging the
research leading to this version of Crabgrass researching and guessing.
EmptyWheel is good that way.
Of the report-storm over Bolton's
being targeted for freely speaking, (not sued for defamation over
anything he said but becoming an FBI criminal target instead), and the
great indecency of this targeted retrebutiont possibly leading to a
pattern needing to be
curbed from one administration to the next lest it become entrenched
operating procedure, view this YouTube - Substack analysis by two academics moderated by Preet Bahrara, former SDNY office head before dismissal by Trump 45. Also, there is this presentation, if you can put up with the speaker's measured style of speeeh the content is thoughtful.
FURTHER: Bolton on the same slippery slope critique path, back then, TheHill:
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