John Bolton expected to be indicted

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John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump turned prominent Trump critic, is expected to be charged with federal crimes soon, according to two federal officials with knowledge of the investigation.

One of the officials said Bolton could be indicted next week. The other said he could be indicted soon.

The charges would be brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where Bolton lives, the officials said. The development was first reported by MSNBC.

Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to discuss matters related to a grand jury.

“As a matter of law, we will not discuss any grand jury matters with the media, but this Justice Department is united as one team in our mission to make America safe again,” the spokesman said. “And the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, along with the entire team at Main Justice continue to empower our US Attorneys to pursue justice in every case.”

The FBI conducted searches of Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington, D.C., office in August. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News at the time that the searches were part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records.”

Lowell, Bolton’s lawyer, has repeatedly said that documents with classified markings kept by Bolton dated back to the George W. Bush administration, when Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and would be typical of those kept by a long-time government employee.

CIA information prompted searches
CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided intelligence to FBI Director Kash Patel that was the basis for the search warrant, the source said. Bolton served as one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first term before a contentious exit.

The searches were focused on Bolton’s handling of classified materials and potential instances of such documents being used in leaks to news media, the source said at the time. They added that it was related to a criminal investigation that began during the Biden administration.

Search warrant affidavits related to the searches released last month referenced potential violations of the Espionage Act, including gathering or sharing national defense information without permission, and unauthorized possession of classified materials.

Trump publicly called for Bolton to be prosecuted in June 2020 after the then-former national security adviser wrote an unflattering book about his experience working for Trump.

“He released massive amounts of classified, and confidential, but classified information. That’s illegal and you go to jail for that,” Trump told Fox News in an interview then.

Bolton maintained that he had fulfilled his legal obligations and obtained a letter from a National Security Council official in 2020 which said the book contained no classified material.

Trump was indicted in 2023 on charges of mishandling top-secret documents and obstructing efforts to recover them after he left office. But federal judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, threw out the charges in 2024.

Leading Trump critic
Bolton has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s, particularly on foreign policy involving Russia, in the years since. Bolton also continued criticizing Trump’s foreign policy after the searches.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Bolton as well, calling him a “lowlife” and “dumb,” among other things.

Days into Trump’s second term, the president canceled Bolton’s Secret Service detail, even though he was the target of an alleged murder-for-hire scheme by a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Bolton would be the third Trump critic to face criminal charges since late September.

A federal grand jury indicted former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday, making him the third critic of President Donald Trump to face criminal charges in recent weeks.

Bolton was indicted in federal court in Maryland, where he lives and where prosecutors have been investigating whether he improperly retained classified materials after his acrimonious departure from the first Trump administration.

The indictment charges him with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.

Asked about the indictment at a White House event Thursday, Trump said, “I didn’t know that,” and added, “He’s “a bad person.”

“I think he’s a bad guy, yeah, he’s a bad guy. Too bad, but that’s the way it goes,” Trump said.

FBI Director Kash Patel said Bolton was charged after the bureau's "investigation revealed that John Bolton allegedly transmitted top secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house in direct violation of federal law.”

Bolton denied any wrongdoing in a statement and said the indictment was politically motivated.

"Donald Trump's retribution against me began then [during Trump's first administration], continued when he tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of my book, The Room Where It Happened, before the 2020 election, and became one of his rallying cries in his re- election campaign," Bolton said. "Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts."

His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Bolton, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, did not break the law.

"The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021," Lowell said in a statement.

"We look forward to proving once again that Amb. Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

The indictment alleges Bolton "abused his position" in the first Trump administration by "sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level-with two unauthorized individuals, namely Individuals 1 and 2."

The two were relatives of Bolton's whom he would message and email the information to, although they did not have security clearances, the court filing said.

Bolton, 76, "also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland," the filing said.

The Justice Department said in a news release that Bolton faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on each count if he is convicted but that any sentence handed down by a judge would be far less than that and in line with federal sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.