GREENBELT, Md. (AP) β Former Trump administration national security adviserΒ John BoltonΒ was charged Thursday with storing top secret records at home and sharing with relatives diary-like notes about his time in government that contained classified information.
The 18-count indictment also suggests classified information was exposed when operatives believed linked to the Iranian regime hacked Bolton’s email account in 2021 and gained access to secrets he had shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI his emails had been hacked, prosecutors say, but did not reveal that he had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers now had possession of this information.
The investigation into Bolton, who served for more than a year in President Donald Trump’s first administration before beingΒ fired in 2019Β and emerging as an outspoken critic of the Republican leader, burst into public view in August whenΒ the FBI searchedΒ his home in Maryland and his office in Washington for classified records he may have held onto from his years in government.
The 18-count indictment, filed in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who after leaving Trumpβs first government emerged as a prominent and vocal critic of the president.
Though the investigation that produced the indictment was underway during the Biden administration and began well before Trumpβs second term, the case will unfold against the backdrop of broader concerns that his Justice Department isΒ being weaponizedΒ to go after his political adversaries and to spare his allies from scrutiny,
The indictment alleges that Bolton βabusedβ his position as national security adviser by sharing more than 1,000 pages of information about βhis day-to-day activitiesβ in his job with two people who were related to him and who were not authorized to view them. He also is accused of illegally retaining at his Maryland home βdocuments, writings, and notesβ related to national defense, including information that was classified up to the top secret level, the indictment says.
Agents during the August search seized multiple documents labeled βclassified,β βconfidentialβ and βsecretβ from Boltonβs office, according to previously unsealed court filings. Some of the seized records appeared to concern weapons of mass destruction, national βstrategic communicationβ and the U.S. mission to the United Nations, the filings stated.
It follows separate indictments over the last month accusingΒ former FBI Director James ComeyΒ of lying to Congress andΒ New York Attorney General Letitia JamesΒ of committing bank fraud and making a false statement, charges they both deny. Both of 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 U.S. attorney who before being elevated to the job had been a career prosecutor in the office.
Questions about Bolton’s handling of classified information date back years. He facedΒ a lawsuit and a Justice Department investigationΒ after leaving office related to information in a 2020 book he published, βThe Room Where it Happened,β that portrayed Trump as grossly uninformed about foreign policy.
The Trump administration asserted that Boltonβs manuscript included classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Boltonβs 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 βsignificant amountsβ of classified information, some at a top-secret level.
Boltonβs attorney Abbe Lowell has said that many of the documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Boltonβs book. He said that many were decades old, from Boltonβs long career in the State Department, as an assistant attorney general and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The indictment is a dramatic moment in Bolton’s long career in government. He 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 U.S. 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 characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.
Those rifts ultimately led to Boltonβs departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Boltonβs resignation. Bolton subsequently criticized Trumpβs approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to the countryβs willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trumpβs Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family.
Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a βwashed-up guyβ and a βcrazyβ warmonger who would have led the country into βWorld War Six.β Trump also said at the time that the book contained βhighly classified informationβ and that Bolton βdid not have approvalβ for publishing it.
