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.
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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:
John Bolton blasts Trump officials for using Signal to conduct government business