John Bolton charged with sharing classified information

A grand jury on Thursday approved a Justice Department request to charge former National Security Adviser John Bolton, 76, with eight criminal counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of unlawfully retaining national defense information.

The FBI raided Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Md., and his office in Washington, D.C., in August. A redacted affidavit claimed that Bolton used an unsecured email account to write diary-like entries about his day and that a foreign entity had hacked it. Agents reported that they seized several documents labeled secret, confidential, and classified, according to court records. According to the filings, some of the seized material appeared to include information about weapons of mass destruction, national strategic communication, and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

What does the indictment say? The indictment alleges that Bolton regularly transmitted his diary entries over AOL and Google servers and a messaging application, sending them to two relatives who did not hold security clearances. After he left the administration, in 2021, a cyber hacker connected with Iran accessed his email account and the diary information, according to the document. Bolton allegedly did not alert the government at the time, even as he was in a settlement to hand over any classified information he had used for his book. During his tenure as national security adviser, Bolton regularly sent the two relatives notes, documents, and information to compile into a diary for him. Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said his client is innocent of the charges. If convicted, each charge carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence, according to a Department of Justice statement. 

Who is John Bolton? Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as a top adviser to President Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019. He differed with the president over U.S. policy on North Korea and Iran and ultimately left the administration on unfriendly terms. In his 2020 memoir The Room Where It Happened, Bolton characterized Trump as uninformed and impulsive when it came to foreign policy. His attorneys said that he sent the book’s manuscript to a White House National Security Council official who verified before publication that it did not contain any classified information. The first Trump administration started an investigation into whether Bolton had revealed unauthorized information, but the Biden administration closed the case.