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Warhawk and former National Security Adviser John Bolton asked the deep state on Wednesday to deep-six former Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz because their nominations to President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet threaten the establishment.

Trump tapped Gaetz to serve as attorney general and Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence. The picks triggered a meltdown from members of the deep state, including Bolton, who told NewsNation on Wednesday that the FBI should be weaponized to investigate Gaetz and Gabbard in order to “send a message to China that the U.S. is serious about its national security.”

“I don’t think either [Gabbard] or Matt Gaetz ought to have a confirmation hearing until they have both had full-field FBI investigations,” Bolton said. “And then I think the Chinese would say, ‘Maybe they are serious.’”

“With [Trump’s] announcement of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence, he’s sending a signal that we have lost our mind when it comes to collecting intelligence,” Bolton said. Notably, China managed to fly several spy balloons over the United States under the Biden-Harris administration.

“Given the Russian propaganda that she has espoused over the past period of time, I think [Gabbard] is a serious threat to our national security,” Bolton said.

Gaetz and Gabbard aren’t strangers to deep-state corruption. Gabbard recently found herself on a Transportation Security Administration watchlist for enhanced surveillance, a whistleblower alleged. Gabbard was reportedly surveilled by federal air marshals on at least eight separate flights after she criticized President Joe Biden in a Fox News appearance.

Gaetz was targeted by the deep state in 2021 after an anonymously sourced report from The New York Times accused him of potentially being a child sex trafficker. The story came after Gaetz helped defeat the Russia-collusion hoax perpetrated by radical leftists, criticized the media for their biased coverage of the Black Lives Matter riots, and highlighted the Justice Department’s weaponized actions.

After 18 months of the propaganda press tarnishing Gaetz’s reputation for allegedly being a pedophile, The Washington Post (in another anonymously sourced report) said prosecutors would not recommend charges for Gaetz.

In simpler terms, the deep-state manufactured a damning story, let it ruminate in the public square for more than a year, and then announced no charges would be brought because there was no evidence. But as The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote: “Gaetz couldn’t very well critique the Department of Justice for their political prosecutions if he was a pariah who everyone thought was a pedophile.”

And now, Bolton wants the Biden-Harris administration to use its remaining weeks in power to sic the FBI on political dissidents all because they threaten to dismantle the intelligence state.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2