Former US national security adviser John Bolton, who served under President Donald Trump, was indicted on Thursday on charges of keeping top secret government documents in his personal residence and sharing diary-style notes containing classified information with family members.
According to the 18-count indictment, classified material may have been exposed in 2021 when hackers believed to be linked to the Iranian regime broke into Bolton’s email account. Prosecutors say that Bolton’s representative informed the FBI about the breach but failed to disclose that he had transmitted classified information through that account, or that the hackers had potentially obtained U.S. government secrets as a result.
The case became public in August after FBI agents executed searches at Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington, D.C. office, looking for classified documents he allegedly retained from his time in government. Bolton, who was dismissed from his role in the Trump administration in 2019 after more than a year of service, has now become the latest former senior official to face legal scrutiny over the handling of sensitive national security information.
Bolton has denied wrongdoing in classified docs case and said charges are part of Trump 'effort to intimidate' opponents, reported AP.
The indictment sets the stage for a closely-watched court case centring on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and later emerged as a prominent and vocal critic of Trump. Though the investigation that produced the indictment was well underway during the Biden administration, the case will play out against the backdrop of broader concerns that Trump is weaponising his Justice Department to go after perceived enemies of the president while sparing his allies from scrutiny.
"The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton's personal diaries over his 45-year career -- records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021," Bolton lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement. "Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries -- that is not a crime. We look forward to proving once again that Amb. Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information." The case follows separate indictments over the last month accusing former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress and New York Attorney General Letitia James of committing bank fraud and making a false statement, charges they both deny. Both those cases were filed in federal court in Virginia by a prosecutor Trump hastily installed in the position after growing frustrated that investigations into high-profile enemies had not resulted in prosecution.
The Bolton case, by contrast, was filed in Maryland by a US attorney who before being elevated to the job had been a career prosecutor in the office.
The indictment is significantly more detailed than the Comey or James cases. It alleges, for instance, that Bolton shared more than 1,000 pages of information about day-to-day activities with two unnamed family members and stored and shared sensitive information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the government to collect intelligence.
One document related to a foreign adversary's plans for a missile launch, while another detailed US government plans for covert action and included intelligence blaming an adversary for an attack, court papers say.
"There is one tier of justice for all Americans," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. "Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardises our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law." Questions about Bolton's handling of classified information date back years. He faced a lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation after leaving office related to information in his 2020 book "The Room Where it Happened", which portrayed Trump as grossly uninformed about foreign policy.
The Trump administration asserted that Bolton's manuscript included classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton's lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.
A search warrant affidavit that was previously unsealed said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain "significant amounts" of classified information, some at a top-secret level.
Lowell has said that many of the documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Bolton's book. He said many were decades old, from Bolton's long career in the State Department, as an assistant attorney general and as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
Bolton also served in the Justice Department during President Ronald Reagan's administration and was the State Department's point man on arms control during George W Bush's presidency. Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation and resigned after serving 17 months as a Bush recess appointment. That allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.
In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump's third national security adviser. But his brief tenure was characterised by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.
Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton's departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton's resignation. Bolton subsequently criticised Trump's approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country's willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump's Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family.
Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a "washed-up guy" and a "crazy" warmonger who would have led the country into "World War Six". Trump also said at the time that the book contained "highly classified information" and that Bolton "did not have approval" for publishing it.
With inputs from AP
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