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Published On: Fri, Aug 22nd, 2025

MSNBC’s Dilanian: FBI & CIA Have Been Completely Politicized, Pushing Untrue Things About The Russia Investigation

MSNBC justice correspondent Ken Dilanian said the FBI and the CIA “has been completely politicized” in reaction to the raid of John Bolton’s home and office.

ALICIA MENENDEZ, MSNBC HOST: I want to go to Ken Dilanian who I believe is at John Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. Ken, we have some new reporting, a source familiar confirming to NBC News that CIA Director John Radcliffe provided FBI Director Kash Patel the intelligence that was the basis for this search. What more can you tell us? KEN DILANIAN, MSNBC JUSTICE AND INTELLIGENCE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Alicia, and that’s why this discussion about whether it relates to the book, it’s really not clear that it does, actually. And the whole staleness question, this reporting sheds new light on that issue, if in fact it’s true. And that’s a big if. But The New York Times is reporting, and our colleague Andrea Mitchell has confirmed that we’re being told that this warrant was based in part on intelligence gathered by the CIA overseas and passed by CIA Director John Radcliffe to the Justice Department. And The New York Times is also reporting that this is about leaks to the media that happened over the last four years, not five years ago when John Bolton was preparing his book. So again, all this is reporting from anonymous sources. Eventually, we’ll see the affidavit of probable cause and we’ll understand what led up to this search. And the problem, of course, is what everyone is saying here is absolutely the case. This FBI, this CIA has been completely politicized. They’ve been saying, the leaders of these institutions have been saying things that aren’t true on a regular basis about the Russia investigation, about the investigations into Donald Trump. And so the question is, can anything they say be trusted? But you do have this third party involved here, which is a magistrate judge who had to look at this evidence, knowing that every word of this affidavit will be scrutinized at some point, and approve this search warrant. This is one of the most intrusive things the FBI can do, aside from take someone’s liberty away. And so they’ve approved it. And FBI agents went out and they spent seven and a half hours in John Bolton’s home today. I was outside for most of the day. And then they emerged with several boxes of material, along with computer equipment and other kinds of things. And again, we’ll have to wait and see whether there’s anything to this, or whether this does smack of retribution by the Trump.

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