Bolton faces 18 criminal charges, including eight counts of transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of withholding national defense information.
The indictment alleges that the former advisor in Trump’s first term “abused his position (…) by sharing with two unidentified family members more than a thousand pages of information about their daily activities”, including information classified top secret.
The indictment does not say who the family members are – according to the AP they were his wife and son -, but says that Bolton sent them “diary-like entries” using a non-governmental email, including “email accounts hosted by AOL and Google”, to send confidential information up to the top secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information level.
He will also have many of these entries printed and stored at his home in Maryland, the prosecutor’s document states.
The indictment further suggests that confidential information was exposed when agents allegedly linked to the Iranian regime hacked Bolton’s email account and gained access to confidential material. According to prosecutors, a representative for Bolton told the FBI in 2021 that his emails had been hacked, but did not reveal that there was confidential information in his account, or that he had shared it with two family members.
On Thursday, John Bolton denied the allegations and called them part of an “intensive effort” by Trump to “intimidate his opponents.” “Now, I have become the latest target in the Justice Department’s instrumentality of charging those it considers its enemies with charges that were previously dismissed or that distort the facts,” he said.
Questioned at the White House by journalists about Bolton’s accusation, Trump said he was not aware of it, but said his former adviser “is a bad guy.”
“There is a level of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and puts our national security at risk will be held accountable. No one is above the law,” he added.
According to the AP, the indictment is significantly more detailed than those against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The news agency says that, unlike these two, which were filed last month by a hastily appointed federal prosecutor, this one was signed by career national security prosecutors. And although the investigation became public in August, when the FBI searched Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington office, the probe was already underway when Trump took office for the second time last January.