John Bolton and the dirty open secret

Bolton does not deserve these charges. Can anyone apply a Declaration of Conscience to this out of control administration?

John Bolton was indicted for a ham sandwich of charges related to the handling of classified information. It’s an absolute B.S charge, and bringing it symbolizes the Orwellian tilt of a government that changes words to the opposite of their meaning. FBI Director Kash Patel:

“The case was based on meticulous work from dedicated career professionals at the FBI who followed the facts without fear or favor. Weaponization of justice will not be tolerated, and this FBI will stop at nothing to bring to justice anyone who threatens our national security.”

United States Department of Justice, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For his part, Bolton recognizes the irony. “For four decades, I have devoted my life to America’s foreign policy and national security. I would never compromise those goals,” he said in a statement. “Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.”

Bolton said that the contents of his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” were reviewed and cleared before publication. The first Trump administration, in 2020, tried to block the book’s release, but the action was denied by a federal judge. Bolton likened the administration’s reopening of the prior investigation to Joseph Stain’s secret police chief, quoting Lavrentiy Beria: “‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime’.”

“These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but this intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct,” Bolton said. “Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.”

I guess I have to ask, who’s weaponizing government now? It’s not a new thing lately, unfortunately. But now, it’s been taken to a level that threatens our constitutional guardrails in government. I mean, there have been some pretty terrible acts committed by our government over the last few centuries. Petty, mean, lying, cheating, self-motivated acts of corruption, from the Trail of Tears to segregation. But using the wheels of government to seek cheap prosecution of dedicated professional, ethical people (I’m not talking about James Comey), while pardoning hardened liars and fixers like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort (not to mention President Biden’s pardon of his own son, Hunter), is the stuff of banana republics and juntas.

What’s really funny is the one person Trump vowed to “lock up,” Hillary Clinton, has not even seen a whiff of legal action. After years of investigating Hillary, it’s Comey who has been hit with trumped-up charges of lying to Congress. Anyone who argues that the Trump Justice Department’s parade of indictments is anything but political weaponization of justice, should not be taken seriously. Of course it is, and everyone knows it. Letitia James went after Trump; she campaigned on going after Trump. Now Letitia James is hit with an indictment. James Comey went after Trump: indictment. John Bolton turned on his former boss, publishing a deeply embarrassing account of Trump 45’s White House dysfunction and rank ineptitude: indictment.

Trump was hit with an indictment regarding his handling of classified information after leaving office. Literally one of the first acts of President Joe Biden after taking his oath of office was to revoke Trump’s security clearance and deny him the customary classified intelligence briefings provided to ex-presidents. That led to NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, to seek return of some documents Trump had removed from the White House when he moved out. That, in turn, led Trump to dissemble, hide evidence, deny, and torture the facts regarding the status of those files. That directly led to NARA turning to the FBI to recover the documents, and the FBI conducting a “raid” on Mar-a-Lago to secure them. And that led to an indictment.

It was all so stupid.

Let me explain something you may know, or may not know, about classified information. First, it’s laughably common, and all over the place. The most classified TS/SCI data is probably the most mundane stuff you can imagine. Much of it has already been published in magazines or online. This isn’t my opinion; it’s what I was told by someone who knows.

Once upon a time, I used to deal with all kinds of security agencies. On one of those trips, to a nondescript office building in suburban northern Virginia, I was told that if I actually saw the stuff these spooks dealt with, I’d be less than impressed. This place was of the kind where everything you had on you, and whatever you brought to show them, was taken from you at the entrance. Then you proceeded through various levels of security, with different color badges, each level manned by a Marine guard and a serious uniformed person at a desk who meticulously examined the badge you were just given 60 second ago at the last desk, before handing you a different one. It’s the kind of place when you walk through a= windowless open office room bursting with cubicles, red lights flash on the walls and everyone covers their desks and switches off their monitors until you exit the other side. When you finally reached the conference room at the end of the maze, your stuff (some of it) would be waiting for you. If you took notes during the meeting, they’d be confiscated before you left the room. These places exist, and they’re not uncommon in the federal government.

I’ve learned that it’s not the little pieces of information and snippets, like Bolton used in his book, or the mementos and papers Trump stored in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, that compromises national security. It’s the compendium of their use and application at the policy level, and the actions produced by our C4I OODA loops using that data, that our enemies crave and can exploit.

Another open secret is that classified stuff is everywhere, and not particularly well secured, or even tracked. NARA is a poor custodian of actual classified data. I’ve written about this before:

There are likely executive branch documents bearing classification markings of various severity—Top Secret, TS/SCI (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information), and the like—stored in closets all over. Former POTUSes and VPOTUSes have various adjacent organizations such as the Carter Center (which shares the same address as the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum) that have very fuzzy relationships with the official NARA-run document archives. By fuzzy I mean “collegial” a.k.a. “fast and loose.”

The FBI found classified information in Mike Pence’s home, and in Joe Biden’s garage. There’s likely a trove of it in Barack Obama’s home, or George W. Bush’s compound in Midland, Texas. Bill and Hillary Clinton probably have a whole room full of classified information in their Manhattan office (paid for by the GSA, to the tune of over $6 million from 2016 through 2024). It’s very likely that John Bolton used all kinds of information in his head that is considered classified, or even documents that bear the classified stamp, as primary sources in his memoir. But that’s why the government has strict reviews of these kinds of books. Bolton submitted his book for review and it was cleared during the first Trump administration. After it was cleared, the White House sued to prevent publication. Too late.

Now, in Trump 47 world, everything that had been done before is being retconned and re-examined under the harsh light of revenge. The government spent four years trying to lock Trump up, and failed. If the Senate had done the job in 2021, we would not be in this situation, but Congress has gone to sleep and doesn’t seem to be able to wake from its somnambulant state. Everything that was done to Trump since 2020 is now being turned back on those who did it. That’s called revenge, and though it’s not the mark of an ethical, rules-based government, it is, so far, grinding on. Perhaps Bolton will be the one who can dump a Declaration of Conscience onto Trump’s revenge parade.

Go ahead and read Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s 1950 speech on the Senate floor. It’s a masterpiece of political integrity.

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Sen. Chase Smith spoke of “a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty … disastrous to the nation. … I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

If Sen. Joe McCarthy could be hung on the petard of such a speech, then John Bolton might incite some kind of revival of integrity, somewhere, that could wake our Congress out of its coma and allow it to take action against Trump’s calumny against him.

John Bolton is an upright patriot. Not everyone agrees with his concept of national security or diplomacy, but nobody can deny he is an intellectual, and that his ideas are presented as serious proposals. Nobody can deny that Bolton is not a foreign agent or someone out to compromise national security or misuse classified information. Whatever charges the Trump Justice Department can concoct against him are the kinds of “crime” anyone with high clearance and a public presence could be hit with. This is because NARA is a librarian, not an operational vault of secrets.

Now, if you want to go after someone who leaks OPSEC, try Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the ate-up Major who now colors himself an Arlington Napoleon. But Hegseth has employed the most First Amendment-trashing policies at the Pentagon, which has forced most serious media out of the building. This will go to court, and likely get struck down. But while it’s winding its way through the injunction and appeal cycle, Hegseth will be free to purge the ranks of those who might apply conscience to their lethality. Early this month, Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of Special Operations Command, retired. This happened within days of the “Summoning” when the ate-up Major berated his generals for being “fat” and out of shape.

Now Southern Command’s Admiral Alvin Holsey has resigned in the wake of continued attacks on boats in Venezuela, purportedly part of the military’s war on drug smuggling, one speedboat at a time. It’s an open secret that Holsey disagrees with Hegseth’s policies, so the honorable thing to do is to resign (as Hegseth encouraged his charges to do). The purge will continue, without the media there to get in the way.

These—media purges, military purges, acts of war with “plenary authority”, firing workers in a shutdown, pursuing charges in vengeance—are the actions of a government coalescing under authoritarian control. They are summoning the Four Horsemen of Calumny: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear, into all levels of government, backed by troops deployed inside our borders and outside.

All the accolades and wonderful deals Trump has done in the Middle East, and hopefully in Ukraine, cannot overtake or provide balance for this abandonment of integrity and conscience in all aspects of governing. We can praise Trump for doing good, but we cannot suffer the fetters of his government. Someone needs to apply a corrective.

John Bolton doesn’t deserve these charges. I am hoping maybe Trump has gone too far and someone will demonstrate the courage of Sen. Chase Smith. Is there anyone who can do it?

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS: You can follow us on social media at several different locations. Official Racket News pages include:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRacket
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewsRacket

Our personal accounts on the platform formerly known as Twitter:

David: https://x.com/captainkudzu
Steve: https://x.com/stevengberman
Jay: https://x.com/curmudgeon_NH

Tell your friends about us!