National security adviser John Bolton, in the Oval Office in May 2019. Photo / Washington Post
John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump - now one of his fiercest critics - has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified and sensitive material.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Maryland, charged Bolton with 18 counts of transmitting or retaining national defence information. The charges each carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence should he be convicted.
The indictment alleges Bolton shared more than 1000 pages of “diary-like” updates detailing his sensitive work between 2018 and 2019 with two relatives who were assisting him in preparing a book he published in 2020.
Bolton sent those messages through a personal email account which was later hacked by someone United States authorities believe was linked to the Government of Iran, the indictment says. Prosecutors also accused Bolton of printing and storing many of those records at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, which FBI agents searched earlier this year.
His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Thursday that the allegations at the heart of the 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. “We look forward to proving once again that Amb. Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information.”
Bolton, in a statement, maintained that as a career public servant he would never compromise America’s foreign policy or national security.
“These charges are not just about [Trump’s] focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents,” Bolton said.
“Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.”
The case makes Bolton, a veteran diplomat and security expert whom Trump has frequently derided as “crazy” and “washed-up,” the third target of the president to face criminal prosecution in less than a month.
Asked about the charges, Trump said at a White House event on Thursday afternoon that his former national security officer was a “bad guy”.
“Too bad. But that’s the way it goes,” Trump told reporters. He hadn’t reviewed the case, Trump said; “But I just think he’s a bad person”.
Grand juries in Alexandria, Virginia, have indicted former FBI director James B. Comey on charges of lying to Congress and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a bank fraud case in recent weeks. Comey pleaded not guilty last week, and James has denied the accusations against her.
Unlike those cases, which were pursued by Trump’s handpicked US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia over the objections of career staff members, the indictment against Bolton was signed by Kelly O. Hayes, a respected veteran prosecutor appointed in February to lead the US attorney’s office in Maryland. Tom Sullivan, a career prosecutor who heads the office’s national security division, was among the prosecutors who presented the case to the grand jury and also signed the document.
After the grand jury’s foreperson delivered the indictment to the judge under seal on Thursday afternoon, Sullivan left the courthouse and declined to comment to reporters.
The investigation is related to a Biden-era probe, and people familiar with it have generally described the evidence against Bolton as stronger than that backing the Comey and James indictments.
Still, senior Justice Department leaders put pressure on the office in Maryland to charge Bolton quickly as Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived foes, the people familiar with the investigation said.
John Eisenberg, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, was at the White House on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorised to discuss it publicly. His division has been involved in the Bolton investigation, which is typical for cases involving classified documents.
Bolton served as US ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and worked in Trump’s first term as his third national security adviser.
An FBI search warrant affidavit unsealed last month revealed agents were pursuing a theory that he violated the Espionage Act by removing classified documents without authorisation after he left Trump’s administration in 2019.
In August, investigators seized computers, phones, and reams of documents – including some in folders labelled “Trump I-IV” and others they said were labelled “secret,” “confidential” or “classified” – during searches of Bolton’s home in Bethesda and office in downtown Washington, court records showed.
Agents believed they would find classified records in Bolton’s possession in part because of information they said they’d learned about the hack of his AOL email account in 2021, the affidavit states.
According to the indictment, a representative for Bolton notified the FBI of the hack at the time but did not report that he had used the account to share potentially sensitive material with relatives.
The hackers at one point appeared to threaten Bolton with the disclosure of those messages, the indictment states.
“I don’t think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content of John’s email,” the message stated. “This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked.”
To prosecute cases alleging mishandling of classified documents, the Government typically needs to show that defendants understood that they were improperly storing or transmitting these sensitive materials.
Prosecutors tried to make their case against Bolton in the indictment, in part, by including recent media interviews in which the former National Security Adviser condemned current Trump administration officials for discussing sensitive government information in a group chat that was leaked.
Bolton said in an April 2025 interview that the chat showed “a terrible lack of judgment communicating with the people in this group in particular who have absolutely no need to know about any upcoming US military operation,” the indictment said.
Cases involving classified documents can take an especially long time to reach trial, and it could take months – or years – for Bolton to have his day in court. That’s because the law governing what classified materials are allowed to be used in court – the Classified Information Procedures Act – is particularly time-consuming and cumbersome.
Bolton’s defence attorney would need to have the proper security clearance to review the evidence that prosecutors hand over as part of the discovery process. Obtaining clearance can often take considerable time.
When a case involves classified materials, the law allows prosecutors to ask the judge to withhold or redact some classified evidence if they feel it is not relevant to the defence and could unnecessarily risk national security secrets. That process is often litigated in pre-trial proceedings.
During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department also pursued an investigation into whether Bolton divulged classified government material in his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened,” which offered a withering portrait of Trump as an “erratic” and “stunningly uninformed leader”. The Justice Department sought to block publication, but a criminal probe did not result in charges and was closed in 2021.
Bolton denied the book contains classified information, cited his co-operation with a lengthy prepublication government review and added that he brought decades of experience working with secret material to the task.
Two years later, Trump himself was charged with 40 counts related to illegally holding on to sensitive government materials and obstructing officials’ attempts to retrieve them. Thirty-two of those counts against Trump were for the retention of national defence information – the same statute cited in many of the counts against Bolton.
Unlike Trump, Bolton was not charged with any crimes related to obstructing the government’s investigation. A federal judge in Florida eventually dismissed the case against Trump, citing issues with the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to prosecute the matter.
President Joe Biden was also investigated for retaining classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington. A special counsel appointed in that case determined in 2024 that no criminal charges were warranted.