Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the FBI raid on the home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton was “clearly retribution.”
Host Kristen Welker said, “I do want to ask you about one of the top domestic issues this week—the FBI search of former National Security Adviser and Ambassador, John Bolton’s home and office. I did have the opportunity to ask the vice president about this. He rejects the idea that this is political retribution. Do you believe that people need to let this investigation play out and not get ahead of it at this point?”
Schiff said, “I think this is clearly retribution. I mean, the idea that they just picked John Bolton, a prominent critic of the president, at random. What the president is trying to do here is very systematic, anyone who stands up to the president, anyone who criticizes the president issue gets the full weight of the federal government brought down on them. So if you’re John Bolton, you get your home seized. If you on the Federal Reserve and won’t lower interest rates you get threatened with firing, if you’re a general and issue a report or the agency does casting doubt on the success of U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, you get fired. If you are the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and you give a jobs report that the president doesn’t like, you get fired. They’re essentially going after any critic, any opposition, in an effort to intimidate them. That’s what this is about. It’s not about Bolton, per se. It’s about anyone else that, like Bolton, might stand up to the president.”