https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lines-up-next-target-as-bolton-could-face-life-in-prison
President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to pressure the Justice Department into prosecuting his perceived enemies have, so far, netted swift results — and more may be on the way.
In a matter of only two weeks, his handpicked U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Lindsey Halligan, obtained indictments against two frequent targets: former FBI Director James B. Comey and, on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Federal prosecutors across the country are pursuing several other investigations, many of which Trump has personally called for. Those include investigations into a sitting U.S. senator, former top leaders of the FBI and CIA and the Georgia prosecutor who charged Trump in a massive 2020 election conspiracy case.
The next set of charges could be coming quickly. Under pressure from senior Justice Department officials, federal prosecutors in Maryland are preparing to ask a grand jury to indict John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser, in a classified documents case. Charges could come as soon as the coming week, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.
Many of Trump’s targets, including Comey, charged with lying to Congress, and James, indicted on allegations of mortgage fraud, have derided the cases against them as baseless and driven by political retribution.
Here’s what to know about where investigations of Trump’s other perceived foes stand:
John Bolton, former Trump national security adviser
Federal authorities in Maryland have been investigating Bolton, a veteran diplomat turned fierce Trump critic, since earlier this year on allegations he illegally retained classified material after his 2019 resignation.
Multiple people familiar with the evidence against him have described the case as generally stronger than those against James and Comey. Court records unsealed last month indicate that FBI agents recovered documents marked classified while searching Bolton’s downtown Washington office.
In seeking a warrant to search the facility, investigators revealed they believed they would find classified records there in part because of information they learned through a foreign adversary hacking into Bolton’s AOL email account years ago.
Kelly O. Hayes, acting U.S. attorney in Maryland, a veteran federal prosecutor whom the Trump administration elevated to the office’s top job this year, is overseeing the case. The prosecution is being led by Tom Sullivan, who heads the national security and cyber divisions in Hayes’s office. Sullivan was previously part of the special counsel team that investigated former president Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents in 2023.
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said the documents marked classified found in Bolton’s office stem from his time in the administration of George W. Bush and had been cleared for his use decades ago.
“An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton,” Lowell said in a statement.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California)
Schiff, a vocal Trump critic who led the House investigation that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment, is facing investigation on mortgage fraud allegations similar to those lodged Thursday against James.
Both inquiries were initiated by criminal referrals from Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and pursued by Ed Martin, a former interim U.S. attorney in Washington turned Justice Department official.
In recent weeks, Martin has met with Hayes, the Maryland U.S. attorney, who is also overseeing the investigation of the senator, to discuss the progress of the investigation.
The inquiry is centered on Pulte’s assertion that Schiff misled lenders while buying a second home in Potomac in 2003 by claiming the property would be his primary residence.
Schiff and his lawyer — former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara — dismiss Pulte’s claims as politically motivated, “transparently false, stale and long debunked.” Bharara privately wrote to the Justice Department in July arguing there was “no factual basis” for those claims and provided documentation to exonerate the senator.
Schiff’s mortgage lender was aware from the start that he and his wife were buying the Maryland house so his family could live there when he was working in Washington, Bharara wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Washington Post. To convict Schiff of mortgage fraud, prosecutors would have to prove that Schiff intended to deceive.
Still, after James’ indictment this week, Schiff is now bracing for the prospect that he could be indicted within a matter of weeks, according to two people familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“Those of us on the president’s enemies list — and it is a long and growing list — will not be intimidated, we will not be deterred,” the senator told reporters Thursday. “We will do our jobs. We will stand up to this president.”
Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve governor
Federal prosecutors in Georgia are also pursuing a mortgage fraud investigation targeting Cook, the Biden-appointed Federal Reserve governor whom Trump is seeking to fire from the central bank.
Last month, investigators issued subpoenas as part of the inquiry, which began with a referral from Pulte, and Martin has conferred with law enforcement officials in the state. Pulte has accused Cook of claiming both a home in Michigan and a condominium in Georgia as “primary residences” on mortgage applications.
Cook’s lawyers deny she committed a crime and have suggested in court papers that she “mislabeled” her homes in her mortgage applications.
John Brennan, former CIA director
The Justice Department acknowledged in July that it had opened an investigation into Obama-era CIA director John Brennan, one of many targets the president has said should be prosecuted for involvement in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
John Ratcliffe, the current CIA director, and Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, referred Brennan and others, including Comey, to the Justice Department. They alleged that Brennan and others manipulated a 2017 intelligence assessment to wrongly tie the Trump campaign to Moscow’s efforts and later lied about it to Congress.
In recent weeks, federal investigators in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have conducted some interviews as part of the investigation, though its full scope remains unclear, one person familiar with its progress said.
One other current and one former official familiar with the matter suggested Gabbard may have undermined the investigation’s progress. Earlier this year, she publicly revoked the security clearances of 37 people who had been drafting the 2017 intelligence assessment, accusing them of politicizing intelligence and failing to safeguard classified information.
Her comments may have damaged their credibility as witnesses in any potential case against Brennan, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing investigation.
FBI officials under former director Christopher A. Wray
In a separate investigation centered on the 2016 election, federal authorities in the Roanoke-based Western District of Virginia are investigating claims that senior bureau officials under former FBI director Christopher A. Wray mishandled or sought to destroy documents related to the Russia investigation.
That inquiry appears to have been sparked by allegations first floated by current FBI Director Kash Patel, who said in July he had discovered thousands of pages of records in “burn bags” at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington. He has suggested they were placed there to cover up wrongdoing by his predecessors at the FBI.
Some of those records — linked to an investigation by special counsel John Durham about the origins of the Russia investigation — have since been released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Current and former national security officials have questioned the premise of Patel’s allegations, noting that many of the records he claims to have uncovered had also been stored on government computer servers for years.
Fani T. Willis, Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney
The New York Times reported last month that the Justice Department had issued a subpoena for travel records of Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who brought a sprawling racketeering case against the president and more than a dozen allies, accusing them of illegally seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
The investigation of Willis is being overseen by Theodore S. Hertzberg, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. But the scope of the inquiry remains unclear — including which records were subpoenaed and from whom.
The Times reported that the subpoena sought information tied to overseas trips Willis took around the time of the 2024 election. But Willis had not personally received a subpoena, her spokesman Jeff DiSantis said.
Trump has railed against Willis since her office charged him in 2023, calling his prosecution a “witch hunt.” The case remains the only remaining criminal matter in which Trump is charged, though Willis and her office are no longer leading the prosecution.
Last month, the Georgia Supreme Court denied Willis’s appeal of a lower court decision that removed her and her office from the proceedings after she was accused of an improper relationship with an outside attorney she appointed to the lead the case.
A state agency is now looking for a new prosecutor to take on the case. Willis has acknowledged she would likely continue to be a target of the president and his supporters.
“I am fully aware that there will be people in power over the next four years who may seek to use that power to lash out at those who are working to uphold the rule of law,” Willis told The Post in January. “I will not be intimidated by threats or acts of revenge.”
Donald Trump’s Truth Social post urging Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi to prosecute his perceived political enemies without “delay” was intended to be a private message, according to administration officials.
A post from the president’s account September 20 addressed to [Bimbo #3] “Pam” demands “justice be served” against his former FBI director James Comey, who was indicted five days later.
Trump — suggesting in his post that the prosecution of his favored targets is retribution for his impeachments and indictments against him — believed he had sent [Bimbo #3] Bondi the message directly, and was surprised to learn it was public, The Wall Street Journalreported.
[Bimbo #3] Bondi was reportedly upset over his mistake, which Trump quickly sought to correct with a follow-up message roughly one hour later praising [Bimbo #3] Bondi for doing a “GREAT job.”
The error has provided a glimpse into a radically reshaped Department of Justice, stripped of its historic independence with both [Bimbo #3] Bondi and Trump at the helm.
When asked about the message in a Senate oversight hearing this week, [Bimbo #3] Bondi replied: “I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years.”
Comey pleaded not guilty to lying to Congress and obstruction in his first court appearance on the charges Wednesday. A trial date is tentatively scheduled to begin January 5, 2026, but Comey’s attorneys are expected to try to have the case thrown out altogether, citing Trump’s “vindictive” prosecution.
Trump’s message to [Bimbo #3] Bondi is likely to be at the heart of that motion, showing the judge overseeing that case that the president directed the nation’s top law enforcement official to investigate a target he labeled “guilty” before any charges were brought against him.
The Trump administration has ousted dozens of officials and government attorneys deemed insufficiently loyal to the president’s agenda, but in his September 20 post, the president singled out Erik Siebert, the now-former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — who Trump himself nominated and then pushed out of the role after he resisted pressure to prosecute Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump complained that “nothing is being done” against Comey, James and Senator Adam Schiff, who are “all guilty as hell,” in his social media post.
He complained that “we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past,” despite Siebert being one of Trump’s own nominees for the job.
Trump called him a “woke RINO, who was never going to do his job,” and said he “fired him” because he wouldn’t take up the case against Comey.
His personal attorney Lindsey Halligan “is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,” Trump wrote in the message to [Bimbo #3] “Pam.”
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”
Three hours later, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was nominating Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience.
Before Halligan entered office, federal prosecutors repeatedly sought to make a case against charging Comey, who is now the first former senior government official facing criminal charges under Trump’s retribution campaign.
According to an internal memo in which career prosecutors explained why they would not seek an indictment, prosecutors determined that a central witness — Comey’s longtime friend Daniel Richmond, a law professor at Columbia University — would prove “problematic” and likely prevent them from establishing a case, according to ABC News.
Richmond’s testimony would result in “likely insurmountable problems” for the prosecution, the memo stated.
In a highly unusual move, Halligan presented the case to a grand jury herself, and the grand jury voted to indict him last month.
A majority of the grand jury voted against charging Comey with one of three counts presented by Halligan, according to court documents. Comey was indicted on two other counts — making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding — after only 14 of 23 jurors voted in favor.
During her contentious confirmation hearing in January, [Bimbo #3] Bondi promised to end what she has called the partisan “weaponization” of the agency against perceived political enemies — echoing claims from Trump and his allies who have characterized the president’s own federal indictments as a politically motivated conspiracy against him.
In that hearing, she did not explicitly rule out prosecuting Trump’s targets. Asked again Tuesday whether she had any instruction from the White House to investigate anyone, [Bimbo #3] Bondi refused to answer. “I’m not going to discuss any conversations,” she said.
Trump, [Bimbo #3] Bondi and law enforcement across the Justice Department — now filled with loyalists and attorneys to dominate agencies that the president claims were weaponized against him — are also targeting other prominent Democratic officials as well as progressive fundraising groups and an array of ideological opponents the administration alleges are tied to acts of terrorism.
Prosecutors in Maryland are expected to bring charges against former national security adviser turned Trump critic John Bolton, according to WSJ, following a raid at his home in August. A case file on a federal court docket remains sealed.
Former FBI director Christopher Wray, another Trump appointee who remained in office under Joe Biden, also is under investigation, according to the newspaper, though the subject of the probe is unclear.
The Art of The Deal has come to government. President Trump wants a piece of the action on transactions needing government approval or funding. He wants equity stakes in an ever-increasing number of America’s major corporations, giving him a say in what those corporations invest in, from whom they buy, to whom they sell, whom they fire and much more. The free-market capitalism that saw this nation prosper like no other is no more. The confessedly corrupt early 20th-century politician George Washington Plunkitt famously said, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.” Trump “seen” his.
The first opportunity was presented by a global trading system that seriously disadvantaged the US. Trump replaced it with a system of tariffs that transfers enormous powers to him. Nvidia, a world leader in AI development, was granted an export licence to sell some of its chips to China in return for directing 15 per cent of the proceeds to the Treasury over which Trump, in effect, presides.
The president now has life-and-death power over Apple, which has won exemption from tariffs on its iPhones and other devices by pouring the odd billion into Trump’s headline-generating announcements of new investments in America. Such relief is in the gift of the president, creating a giant pay-to-play casino where market forces, flawed though they were, once prevailed. Congress can read all about it on Truth Social.
The second opportunity was presented to Trump by Nippon Steel’s request for approval of its acquisition of US Steel. Permission granted, in return for which the government received a golden share in the combined company. That, added to its need for tariff protection, gave Trump considerable power not only over the new US Steel but over the auto, appliance and other industries that use the metal, both domestic and imported.
The third opportunity for power enhancement was created for Trump when President Biden ladled out billions in subsidies to chipmaker Intel. In return, in the inimitable words of commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, “We got nothing, nothing.” A Republican president of the old school might have cancelled the Biden subsidies and left Intel at the mercy of market forces.
Trump has been accused of many things, but never of being a traditional Republican. He demanded that Intel issue and turn over to the government some $8.9 billion of new shares, in effect giving him control of 10 per cent of Intel’s outstanding shares. Socialist senator Bernie Sanders professed delight. Intel’s competitors not so much. Existing rivals and those the Silicon Valley crowd expects to conjure will be at a significant disadvantage competing with businesses in which the government has a financial interest, and with which Trump’s political future is now linked.
The president promises “many more” such deals, or “shakedowns” as his critics call them — the substitution of state capitalism for market capitalism, as an economist would put it. MP Materials, a potential major producer of rare earth magnets, is to receive government financial aid that it says will position the Department of Defense “to become the company’s largest shareholder”.
Lockheed Martin, which gets 90 per cent of its revenues from the US government, might be the next of many defence contractors Trump is planning to add to the congeries of enterprises under his management. The issuance of new shares to the government, of course, will dilute the value of existing shares, and is therefore a de facto seizure of private property. And, say critics, will surely slow the pace of risk-taking innovation.
In short, the extent of presidential control of the economy has not been seen since the end of the Second World War. Trump has added to his influence over macroeconomic policy by levying tariffs, another name for taxes. He is in the process of gaining control of monetary policy by packing the Fed board and firing an existing board member for alleged mortgage fraud, no trial necessary.
Fed independence, done and dusted, control of the macroeconomy complete, he is turning his attention to the independent players that make up the microeconomic economy. With sycophants in seats once occupied by powerful advisers and the opposition Democrats in disarray, effective resistance to Trump’s power push is negligible.
Economists have long linked free markets with individual freedom, state control of the economy with the power of government to decide which companies prosper and which industries provide jobs in which states. Trump has displaced those market forces with, well, himself. Add control of the criminal justice system and the firing or demotion of two dozen January 6 prosecutors; replacement of professional number-crunchers with Maga loyalists at no-longer independent agencies; raids on the home and office of former National Security Advisor John Bolton; and plans to replace local law enforcement with what the Founding Fathers feared, a federal “standing army” under the control of the president, America’s new CEO-in-chief.
“You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet” has long been a common boast among America’s entertainment celebrities, of which the star of The Apprentice is one. Now, as president, he is favouring visitors with baseball caps emblazoned “Trump in 2028”.
President Donald Trump has ordered the Secret Service to stop providing a protection detail and other protective measures for former Vice President Kamala Harris, revoking an order signed in January by then-president Joe Biden to extend her security until January 2026.
Trump issued the directive Thursday in the form of a memorandum to the agency informing officials that they were “hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by Executive Memorandum” concerning Harris, who under normal circumstances would have lost her protection on July 20, six months after the end of her term.
The end of Harris’s protective detail and the existence of the memorandum were first reported by CNN.
In a statement to the network, Harris adviser Kristen Allen said the former vice president is “grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety.”
Since returning to office, Trump has used his authority over the Secret Service to punish perceived political adversaries by removing previously authorized protective details, even in cases where there have been documented threats to the people in question.
In his first days back in the White House, the president ordered the agency to stop protecting his first-term national security adviser, John Bolton, and his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Both men have been on a list of officials targeted for assassination by Iran in retaliation for the Trump-ordered drone strike on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qassem Soleimani during the president’s first term.
But Trump nonetheless ordered their protective details to be withdrawn.
In March, he ordered an end to protection for former president Biden’s adult children, including his son Hunter Biden, at the urging of conspiracy theorist and far-right influencer Laura Loomer.
The ex-president had signed a directive extending protection for his adult children for six months after leaving office — something Trump had done for his own family before vacating the White House after losing the 2020 election.
But Trump declined to extend Biden the same courtesy and in a social media post, he expressed his disapproval of what he said were 18 agents assigned to Hunter Biden‘s security detail during his visit to South Africa this week. Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, is originally from South Africa.
“Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous! He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has been strenuously questioned.
Trump also said that Ashley Biden, who he said had 13 agents assigned to her, would be “taken off the list.”
Cabinet members showered President Donald Trump with praise at their hours-long televised meeting, but a political consultant warned those displays of devotion could wind up backfiring.
The 79-year-old president on Tuesday hosted a record-breaking three-hour, 16-minute cabinet meeting where Senate-confirmed officials fell over themselves laughing at his wisecracks and insults, and they lavished him with adulation that astonished “CNN News Central” host Erica Hill and other onlookers.
“These cabinet meetings that the president holds that are really, I suppose, a moment for, once again, his cabinet to publicly praise him,” Hill said. “It’s a very ‘dear leader’ feeling moment. Yesterday, nearly four hours – does that concern you at all?”
Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton doesn’t think those displays would break through with most Americans, who he said won’t likely see the meetings on television.
“I don’t pay attention to to those meetings, and I don’t think that most average Americans pay attention,” he said. “Most people are working during the times that we’re in these things.”
“So do they not matter?” Hill interrupted.
“I don’t think they do,” Singleton replied. “I’m just being honest. If I were to conduct a focus group and do some qualitative analysis, and I were to ask the American people, ‘How much do you care about the president showcasing 20 minutes of these meetings that we actually air on TV?’ I think most people probably would say, ‘I don’t care, I don’t think about it, I’m too busy doing other things.’ So I don’t think that matters a whole lot at all.”
Democratic strategist Karen Finney disagreed, saying the public would be appalled once they actually saw what takes place in those meetings.
“I think what actually would matter to people is the fact that he needs so much validation,” Finney said. “You know, he is doing this retribution tour, revenge on people like John Bolton. He is firing people who won’t give him information if they give him the truth, but he doesn’t like the truth, you’re going to get fired. He seems to think that economic policy is really all about controlling the Fed, so how can I get rid of the people I don’t like and just get the people I do like, and then has to sit in a meeting where everybody is clearly instructed that they have to boost his ego up.”
“I don’t agree with Shermichael,” she added. “I don’t think most people care about much of what’s happening in that meeting, but I think they care that our president is so weak that he needs to be bolstered like that.”
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-cabinet-meeting-2673924734
When the FBI was searching the Bethesda, Maryland home of former National Security Adviser John Bolton on Friday, August 22, Michael Cohen — Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer — didn’t mince words during an appearance on MSNBC.
Bolton, Cohen argued, was being targeted for revenge by President Donald Trump and his allies. Cohen predicted that Bolton will be indicted on some type of federal charges, warning that other Trump foes will likely be facing criminal charges as well. And during a subsequent MSNBC appearance on August 24, Cohen predicted that former FBI Director James Comey will be targeted for retribution by Trump and his loyalists.
In his August 25 column, MSNBC’s Steve Benen describes a pattern of Trump overtly threatening officials who disagree with his policies.
“On Friday morning,” Benen notes, “the president specifically targeted Muriel Bowser, the Democratic mayor of the District of Columbia, for pointing to official data that conflicts with his perceptions. ‘Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen,’ the Republican wrote to his social media platform.”
The “Rachel Maddow Show” producer continues, “Two days later, after former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie criticized Trump during an appearance on ABC News’ ‘This Week,’ this also generated a related presidential threat. The New York Times reported: President Trump, on Sunday, (August 24), threatened to investigate former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey over a 2013 political scandal, days after the FBI raided the home and office of another former Trump official turned critic.”
The ex-Trump official Benen was referring to was obviously Bolton.
“In case that wasn’t quite enough,” Benen notes, “the president apparently also saw Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation,’ leading Trump to pitch yet another threat. NBC News reported: The president, on Sunday, also threatened to pull federal funding for the replacement of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in 2024. The federal government had previously agreed to pay for the bridge’s replacement. ‘I gave Wes Moore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge,’ Trump wrote. ‘I will now have to rethink that decision???'”
The MSNBC columnist continues, “The published threat was accompanied by nonsensical claims about crime rates in Baltimore — a city that’s seen its murder rate drop to a 50-year low — and an attack on the Democratic governor’s military service. Moore is a decorated combat veteran who served in Afghanistan…. The common thread isn’t exactly well hidden: Bowser, Christie and Moore told the public facts that Trump didn’t want to hear, and presidential threats soon followed. Indeed, hours after targeting the former Republican governor and incumbent Democratic governor, the president, for good measure, proceeded to threaten ABC and NBC twice for airing news coverage that he disapproved of.”
