Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump terminated the Secret Service detail that was assigned to his former national security adviser John Bolton, Bolton confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.
Bolton, who left the Trump White House in November 2019, has required ongoing US Secret Service protection because of threats against him from Iran. Trump initially terminated his protection after he left his administration in the first term, but President Joe Biden restored it once he took office.
“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has made this decision,” Bolton said in a statement to CNN. “Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to once again extend Secret Service protection to me in 2021.”
“The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination. The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”
Bolton, who served in senior national security positions in the Bush administration, has long been known for his hawkish position against Iran. He strongly opposed the 2015 nuclear deal that placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from US sanctions, and he called on Trump to withdraw from the deal after he took office.
Trump withdrew the US from the deal in May 2018, about a month after Bolton was hired as his national security adviser. Trump fired Bolton in September 2019 after saying he “strongly disagreed with many” of Bolton’s positions.
Bolton published a book in 2020 in which he claimed the president was woefully under informed on matters of foreign policy, obsessed with shaping his media legacy, and that Trump asked the leaders of Ukraine and China to help him win the 2020 election. Trump responded by threatening to jail Bolton, repeating a threat he makes routinely about people who cross him.
After Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani was assassinated on Trump’s orders in early 2020, the Justice Department said the Iranian government sought revenge against senior Trump officials who were involved in the killing, which included Bolton, even though he was not in the administration at the time of the fatal strike.
In August 2022, the Justice Department charged an Iranian national and member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accusing them of attempting to arrange the murder of Bolton. Prosecutors said the plot against Bolton was “likely in retaliation” for Soleimani’s assassination.
On Monday, as one of his first acts in office, Trump revoked Bolton’s security clearance – one of scores of former national security officials who lost their clearances with a signature of the new president.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
CNN’s Michael Williams contributed to this report.
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