John Bolton — ex-President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who was allegedly the target of a murder-for-hire plot — said on Thursday that his former boss yanked away his Security Security detail soon after the then-official resigned in Sept. 2019.
“The day I resigned, President Trump cut off my Secret Service,” Bolton told MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell. “In fact, within hours after I submitted my letter, they were pulling the bells and whistles off my house, and so on.”
“Is that normal?” Mitchell asked.
“No, it’s not normal,” Bolton replied.
“Well, it’s normal for Donald Trump,” he added. “But not normal for the institution.”
The former adviser said he was “grateful” that President Joe Biden authorized his request for a Secret Service detail.
Bolton’s account about Trump stripping him of security detail comes a day after the Justice Department charged an Iranian operative named Shahram Poursafi with allegedly plotting to have Bolton murdered.
The Justice Department stated that the plot was likely meant to be retaliation for the death of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a drone strike authorized by Trump in January 2020.
The relationship between the hawkish Bolton and the somewhat less war-hungry Trump had soured considerably by the time the national security adviser left the administration.
