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John Bolton says he’s faced Trump’s retribution. He worries what Kash Patel might do.

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser believes his old boss pulled his Secret Service protection as part of a broader “retribution” campaign against political foes. And he worries that the campaign is just beginning.

John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who left the Trump administration in 2019 and quickly turned into a sharp Trump critic, has had Secret Service protection since 2021 because of credible threats that Iran was trying to assassinate him. Mr. Trump ended that protection when he returned to office – even though the threat hasn’t changed.

Mr. Bolton believes that the revenge campaign could get much more severe if President Trump gets his choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Kash Patel, who worked under Mr. Bolton at the National Security Council during the first Trump term, will get his confirmation hearing in the Senate later this week. Mr. Bolton warns that he could be “a central element” of a larger series of reprisals.

Why We Wrote This

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric raised preinauguration fears that he’ll pursue reprisals against perceived enemies. We have an interview with a former Trump adviser, John Bolton, who says he is already feeling the heat.

The Monitor spoke to Mr. Bolton on Monday. The following transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity:

How did you find out that President Trump had ended your Secret Service protection? Where were you when you found out?

At about 11:30 on the night of January the 20th, Inauguration Day, the Secret Service came and knocked on my door and said one of the supervisory agents wanted to talk to me. And he basically said, “We wanted to let you know tonight, rather than tomorrow morning. But the president’s ordered the protection to be ended at noon on Tuesday.”

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