Bolton in familiar waters

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 23rd of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brow

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

First up on The World and Everything in It…a family project under federal investigation.

Last week, a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton…on charges of retaining and sharing national defense information.

BROWN: During a speaking event at Harvard in September, Bolton fielded questions about the investigation. You’ll hear him refer to his 2020 book, The Room Where It Happened, about working for President Trump.

BOLTON: Well, I'd love to talk about it at greater length, but for pretty obvious reasons I can't. I will just say I'm very confident that there's nothing in the book that's classified. That's why there was a pre-publication review.

How serious are the charges Bolton is facing?

MAST: Joining us now is veteran attorney Bobby Higdon…he was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and served 24 years as Assistant U.S. Attorney before that.

Bobby, good morning.

BOBBY HIGDON: Good morning, Lindsay.

MAST: Bobby, break down the indictment for us-what does it say Bolton was doing with this National Defense Information?

HIGDON: Well, when you boil it all down, what it says is that Mr. Bolton was taking national security information that included his personal schedules, details of meetings he had, and information he obtained while he was functioning as National Security Advisor for President Trump in the first administration, and he was using those, it looks like to me, to maintain sort of a diary and also to prepare and save information so that he could write a book or make other use of it going forward. But it alleges that all of that information was national security information, protected and classified, and that he would have no right to use that information or to handle it in a way apart from the government controlled protections that surround that type of information.

MAST: So what do we know about who he was sharing the information with?

HIGDON: Well, it doesn't, in the indictment, say specifically. At least two individuals, individuals A and B, I've seen a media reporting that those are family members. But the indictment doesn't tell us that. That will come out in the proceedings, because the government will have to tell Mr. Bolton. But right now we don't know officially who they are.

MAST: Well, to that end, I think many of us take notes on our work and may occasionally share details with family around the table, but what are the rules for top government officials about keeping those types of personal records or sharing them?

HIGDON: Well, the rules are very tight. You're right. We all have the habit of sharing information with family and friends, but you cannot, absolutely cannot do that with classified national security information. Mr. Bolton had security clearances at the highest level in the government. Not only did he have top secret clearance, but he had what they call compartmentalized approval for specific projects specific types of information, and so he was regulated at the highest level. And those regulations govern how you handle the information, how you store it, how you transmit it, and who you can share it with. They're very specific, and as someone who had those clearances, I can tell you that they make it very clear what information is covered and how you're to use that information, where you have to keep it, and they make it very clear that you cannot use that information outside of those parameters, and you cannot use that information after you lose your security clearance, usually when you leave the position that you're functioning in.

MAST: This is just the latest in a series of indictments this fall against perceived enemies of President Trump, following charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. How does the Bolton case look similar or different, in your view?

HIGDON: We know in looking at the indictments, there are several things that strike me as different.

Number one is the Bolton indictment is a much more detailed indictment. It's what we call a speaking indictment, and this is often used in white collar cases, national security cases, fraud cases, where you lay out some of the facts to tell the story that surrounds the crime. Now, that was not done in Mr. Comey's case. It was done in a small way in the Attorney General New York's case, but the crime that she's alleged to commit is a very focused, narrow one that deals with her own personal ownership of real estate. But Mr. Bolton's indictment is very detailed. It goes on for many pages, outlining the type of information and how he allegedly handled it. That's the first thing I noticed.

Number two is, you'll note that in the other two indictments, the Comey one and the James one, those were returned by the grand jury at the specific request of the United States Attorney. That's who signed those indictments. In this case, the indictments were signed by an assistant United States attorney and also an attorney that is from Maine, justice dealing with this type of issue in the national security section of the Justice Department. These are both longtime career people, both of them have been with the department more than a decade, so this matter is being handled by people with that specialty. Now I don't know whether that makes any difference, but those are significant differences in those first two indictments versus this one.

MAST: What do you know about how long this investigation has been going on? Does it date? Is it just since the President has been in office? Does it date back further than that? Is there anything to say about that timing?

HIGDON: It's hard to know when the investigation began, but the dates that it covers time periods back when Mr. Bolton, of course, was working for President Trump in the first administration, and it brings it current until very recently. It's not clear from the indictment exactly what has happened at each stage of those time periods, but the indictment alleges that some of the misconduct was very recent, including it in, I think, August of 2025.

MAST: Bolton pleaded not guilty at a Maryland district court last week…so what comes next in the case?

HIGDON: Well, what comes next is there'll be a process where there's an exchange of discovery. That's that's where the government has to show what evidence they have. I'm sure there will be litigation over the use of classified information in the courtroom, because in order to prove this case, they're going to have to prove what type of information had access to, how he used it, and probably much of it has not lost its classified nature. And so the government will have to handle that very carefully. The court will, and the defense counsel will, so it'll be litigation and procedures that are put in place around that. So this could take a little while, because it is a very delicate thing to do to bring national security information into an open courtroom.

MAST: Well, I do think it's worth pointing out when Donald Trump was indicted for storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Bolton spoke with NPR. Here's what he said then.

BOLTON: If Trump had followed standard procedures, if anybody could have trusted him with the documents, if he wanted to write a book about his time as president, there were procedures that could have been set up. He disregarded all of those.

And now it appears Bolton may have been swimming in similar waters. So what do you make of that?

HIGDON: Well, as in any case, prosecutors always look at what the individuals that are being charged have said about the issue that they're being charged with, and so I imagine that Mr. Bolton's statements will be carefully reviewed to see if they provide an indication as to what his state of knowledge was. Because, of course, the government, in order to convict him, has to prove that he understood what the rules were and that he violated, knowingly violated, those rules, and so any statement that he has made around that issue will certainly be something that they'll look at carefully and determine whether or not it is evidence in this matter.

MAST: Is there anything else you think that's worth highlighting in this case as we wait for it to proceed?

HIGDON: Well, you know, it's interesting that one of the things that I looked at is, you know, how this compares to other cases, and this is not the first time that anyone has been charged with a mishandling secret and classified information that was, you've already referred to President Trump's case. This was what was investigated with respect to President Biden, when you go back to Sandy Berger, the national foreign national security advisor in the Clinton administration, he was convicted of a similar type of thing—he pled to a misdemeanor. General Petraeus, when he was the director of the CIA, he was charged with a similar type of violation, actually, in the Western District of North Carolina, and then the CIA director before him, John Deutch, was also charged with this. Now those last three all pled to misdemeanors. They worked out deals with the Justice Department.

Won't be able to tell right now how this case may be resolved, whether it's going to be something more serious, or whether it's going to be resolved with an agreement. I will note that one of the differences, as best I can tell, is that the allegation as to Mr. Bolton is that bad actors that are enemies of the United States apparently accessed some of this information by breaching his email system. And I think in those other three cases, there was no suggestion that the information had been obtained by any bad actor. So I don't know if that's going to make a difference, but there is precedent for pursuing these types of cases in that list of individuals.

MAST: Bobby Higdon is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney now in private practice in North Carolina. Thanks so much.

HIGDON: Thank you, Lindsay.

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