Former Nationwide Safety Adviser John Bolton speaks to reporters after talking in a panel hosted by the Nationwide Council of Resistance of Iran – U.S. Consultant Workplace (NCRI-US) on the Willard InterContinental Lodge on Aug. 17, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Photographs
John Bolton, a former nationwide advisor to President Donald Trump, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland.
Bolton is charged in a 26-page indictment with eight counts of transmission of nationwide protection info and 10 counts of retention of nationwide protection info. He served as Trump’s nationwide safety advisor from April 2018 by means of September 2019.
Bolton is the third high-profile Trump foe to be criminally charged in latest weeks after being criticized by the president.
The 26-page indictment says that Bolton, each throughout and after his tenure as Trump’s nationwide safety advisor up till this previous August, “abused his place … by sharing greater than a thousand pages of his day-to-day actions because the Nationwide Safety Advisor — together with info referring to the nationwide protection which was categorised as much as the TOP SECRET/SCI level-with two unauthorized people, particularly People 1 and a couple of.”
These individuals, who had been unidentified within the indictment, are relations of Bolton and didn’t have safety clearance to obtain the data, the indictment says.
“Bolton additionally unlawfully retained paperwork, writings, and notes referring to the nationwide protection, together with info categorised as much as the TOP SECRET/SCI degree, in his house in Montgomery County, Maryland,” the indictment mentioned.
Bolton is accused of electronically sending, by means of non-governmental messaging functions, “diary-like entries” to the 2 different folks that contained info categorised as high secret.
FBI brokers carry packing containers as they exit the constructing that homes the Washington workplace of former Nationwide Safety Adviser John Bolton, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 22, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Reuters
The indictment says that sooner or later between September 2019 and July 2021, “a cyber actor believed to be related to the Islamic Republic of Iran hacked Bolton’s private e mail account and gained unauthorized entry to the categorised and nationwide protection info in that account, which Bolton had beforehand emailed to People 1 and a couple of whereas he was the Nationwide Safety Advisor.”
The costs in opposition to Bolton, who, like Trump, is a Republican, had been unsealed shortly after the indictment was handed to a Justice of the Peace choose in U.S. District Court docket in Greenbelt.
Grand juries in Virginia just lately individually indicted former FBI Director James Comey on fees associated to allegedly mendacity to Congress, and New York Lawyer Common Letitia James, who’s accused of financial institution fraud associated to a mortgage on a house she owns in Virginia.
They’ve denied any wrongdoing in these instances.
Trump was requested in regards to the Bolton indictment by a reporter on the White Home.
“I did not know that,” Trump mentioned.
“You are telling me for the primary time, however I feel he is … a nasty individual,” Trump mentioned. “Yeah, he is a nasty man. It is too dangerous. However that is the way in which it goes proper? That is the way in which it goes.”
FBI brokers on Aug. 22 raided Bolton’s Maryland house and workplace in Washington, D.C.
The raids are a part of a “nationwide safety investigation seeking categorised information,” an individual conversant in the matter instructed NBC Information on the time.
CNBC has requested remark from Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.
That is creating information. Test again for updates.