John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, was indicted yesterday on charges of retaining and transmitting national defence information, marking the third time in recent weeks the Justice Department has secured criminal charges against one of the Republican president’s critics.
Bolton’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. His lawyer had previously denied that Bolton engaged in wrongdoing.
The indictment, according to court records, comes after court documents made public last month revealed that Bolton was under federal investigation for potential mishandling classified information.
Trump, who campaigned for the presidency on a vow of retribution after facing a slew of legal woes once his first term in the White House ended in 2021, has dispensed with decades-long norms designed to insulate federal law enforcement from political pressures.
In recent months, he has actively pushed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department to bring charges against his perceived adversaries, even driving out a prosecutor he deemed to be moving too slowly in doing so.
Bolton served as US ambassador to the United Nations as well as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term before emerging as one of the president’s most vocal critics. He described Trump as unfit to be president in a memoir he released last year.
The charges against Bolton come shortly after the Justice Department indicted former FBI director James Comey, who investigated Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who previously brought a civil fraud case against Trump and his family real estate company.
Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017, is facing charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction of Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
James is facing charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. She has denied wrongdoing and is slated to appear in federal court later this month.
Senior leaders at the US Justice Department had been pushing for swift charges against Bolton, despite initial concern from some line prosecutors in Maryland, as well as attorneys in the National Security Division who felt more investigation was needed and feared the case was being rushed, two people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.
Prosecutors more recently concluded they were comfortable proceeding after taking more time to review the evidence and worked over the weekend to prepare the case, one of those sources added.
FBI agents conducted a search of Bolton’s home and office in August, seeking evidence of possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove, retain or transmit national defence records, according to partially unsealed search warrants filed in federal court.
In his Maryland home, agents seized two cell phones, documents in folders labelled ‘Trump I-IV’ and a binder labelled ‘statements and reflections to Allied Strikes,’ according to court documents.
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