Donald Trump Cut Off My Secret Service Protection: John Bolton

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has revealed that Donald Trump scrapped his secret service protection just “hours after” he quit his post.
Bolton, who has been facing threats to his life from Iranian state actors, suggested that the former president had denied him the security typically afforded to senior officials in retaliation for his 2019 resignation.
“Normally people get protection for three months, four months, for some period after they leave office just as a precaution. But in my case, it ended a few hours after I resigned” Bolton said during an exclusive interview with Newsweek, in which the diplomat discussed on his former boss, U.S. foreign policy and his planned “protest vote” for the 2024 election.
Newsweek reached out to Trump via email outside of normal business hours and will update this story if we receive a response.
In what Trump said was a termination but the diplomat insists was a resignation, Bolton left his post as National Security Adviser in September 2019, having served only 17 months in the role.
As well as presidents, first ladies and foreign dignitaries, the secret service often includes individuals recently departed from high-ranking government positions in its list of protectees, as Bolton said had been the case for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper during the Trump-Biden transition.
When asked why the former president had broken with standard practice in this case, Bolton said: “Because it was Trump [and] he wasn’t very happy I’d resigned.”
Bolton told Newsweek that, later that same day, the White House had also frozen his twitter account. “I mean, talk about dramatic,” he said.
Around Thanksgiving 2021, however, Bolton said the FBI invited him to its headquarters to discuss reinstating his security detail, and asked whether he had contacted President Biden to this end.
“Are you kidding me? Have I called the Biden White House?” Bolton told the Bureau. “Why don’t you call the Biden White House and see if that’s appropriate?”
Bolton said that that Biden agreed to restore his security detail, and that the whole affair was motivated by increasing concerns over his safety amid threats from Iran.
In August 2022, the Department of Justice unsealed charges against an Iranian national for engaging in a murder-for-hire plot, the intended target of which was Bolton. Last month, the State Department said that it would be offering “up to $20 million” for information leading to the culprits, who were apparently motivated by Bolton’s role in the 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
As evidence of Iranian assassination attempts on both Trump and members of his former cadre mounts, Bolton said it was high time for the U.S. to address the threats posed by Tehran.
However, he said that the current Biden-Harris administration – like Obama’s before it – had fallen prey to the “illusion” that appeasement with Iran would be sufficient for it to give up its nuclear weapons program, and for “sweetness and light [to] break out in the Middle East.”
Bolton said that the regime’s continued attempts to procure WMDs means the U.S. would be “fully justified in using force to pre-emptively destroy the [nuclear weapons] program.” When asked for clarification, he said that the direct involvement of U.S. troops was probably unnecessary, and that America’s principal strategy should be to give Israel “any kind of help we can to destroy the program.”
Despite the former president’s rhetoric on Iran, Bolton also believes that Trump could propose a deal similar to the 2015 agreement if handed a second term.
“For Trump, everything’s a deal,” Bolton said. “And so I don’t I don’t think you can rule it out.”
he said this “came within an inch” of happening in 2019, when French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to facilitate a meeting between Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the G-7 summit in Biarritz. Bolton said that he, as in most of his experiences with Trump, had no idea what the president would do, and that had the meeting taken place, he would have quit the next morning.
Despite this, he still believes Iran wants Harris in the White House, and that her approach to the country would be largely in line with Biden’s.
Russia, meanwhile, is banking on a Trump victory according to Bolton, who said that Vladimir Putin “knows how to deal” with the former president, and considers him “an easy mark.”
Bolton also criticized Trump’s “24-hour” Ukraine peace plan, and said that the former president would have a hard time owning up to the strategy’s inevitable failure.
“If it wasn’t solved in 24 hours, it wouldn’t be Trump’s fault because it’s never Trump’s fault,” Bolton said. “So it would have to be somebody else’s fault, and I think he would conclude pretty quickly that it wasn’t his friend Vladimir’s fault, It was Zelensky’s.”
Upset with the direction his party has taken under Trump, Bolton previously indicated that he would be writing Dick Cheney’s name on his November ballot. However, following the former VP’s endorsement of Harris, Bolton told Newsweek that he had been turned toward casting a less ambiguous protest vote.
“Maybe Ronald Reagan,” Bolton said. “Maybe I should vote for the first presidential candidate I ever worked for, which is Barry Goldwater.”
However, Bolton said that a Trump loss in November could bring back the GOP of old, and that the “aberration” that is Trump is unlikely to be replicated by Vance or any other surrogates supposedly primed to fill his shoes.
“I think he’s one of a kind and I don’t think there is a Trumpism to leave behind because I don’t think he has a philosophy,” Bolton said. “So it’s sort of like in Star Wars – a disturbance in the force.”
“When he leaves the scene either after defeat this November or whenever it turns out to be, there will be a struggle for the future of the party,” Bolton added. “But I think the Reaganite approach can ultimately prevail.”
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Update 10/11/24, 7:10 a.m. ET: This article was updated to reflect that Newsweek has reached out to Trump for comment.