Former Trump national security adviser indicted

John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser before becoming an outspoken critic of the president, has been indicted on federal charges.

The Justice Department presented the case before a grand jury in Maryland on Thursday, and agreed that there was sufficient evidence to convict Bolton, who issued a statement asserting his innocence.

It comes after FBI agents searched Bolton’s home and office in August as part of an investigation into the handling of classified information.

Under the indictment, Bolton (76 years old) became the third political opponent of the US President to face charges in recent weeks. He could face decades in prison.

According to the 26-page indictment filed in court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday, Bolton is charged with eight counts of transmitting national defense information (NDI) and 10 counts of unlawful retention of NDI.

An indictment in the American judicial system is a formal accusation issued by a grand jury—a group of members of the public convened by a prosecutor to review evidence to determine whether a case should proceed.

Prosecutors accuse Bolton of illegally transmitting highly classified information about US national defense using his personal email and other messaging applications.

“These documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign policy relationships,” court papers said.

If convicted, Bolton could face up to 10 years in prison on each count. He is expected to surrender himself to authorities on Friday.

“No one is above the law,” US Attorney Pam Bondi said in a statement announcing the charges.

Bolton said in a statement that he looked forward to defending his “lawful conduct” in court and accused Trump of seeking “revenge against me.”

“Now, I have become the latest target in the Department of Justice being used as a weapon to indict those who are indicted [Trump] “He considers them his enemies on charges that he had previously dropped or distorted the facts,” Bolton said.

Bolton’s attorney, Abe Lowell, said the charges stem from a diary his client kept during his 45-year career in public service.

“Like many government officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept a daily diary — and that’s not a crime,” Mr. Lowell said.

He described the records as “non-classified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI since 2021.”

The indictment says Bolton shared “more than a thousand pages of information about his daily activities,” including information classified as top secret, with two unnamed relatives.

He allegedly shared the information with his wife and daughter, according to US media reports.

The unauthorized information includes “diary-like entries from Bolton’s time as National Security Advisor” and was allegedly “printed and stored” at Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland.

The indictment also says that sometime between September 2019 and July 2021, a “cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran” hacked his personal email account and gained access to classified information.

It says a Bolton representative told the FBI about the hack, but the agency was not warned that the hackers may have accessed sensitive information.

It was Bolton Expelled from the first Trump administration in 2019. In his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, he recounted his time working under Trump and portrayed him as a president who was out of touch with geopolitical affairs.

The White House filed a lawsuit to prevent the book’s publication, arguing that it contained classified information and had not been properly vetted. A The judge rejected the request The book was published a few days later.

The US Department of Justice subsequently opened an investigation into whether Bolton had mishandled classified information by revealing certain information in the book.

Court documents state that while “the initial manuscript contains significant amounts of highly classified information that should be removed,” the published version contains nothing included in the indictment.

Asked about the indictment on Thursday at the White House, Trump said he did not know about it, but added that Bolton was a “bad guy.”

Bolton, who served as George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, was among the former officials who were critical of Trump and who were stripped of their Secret Service protection in January.

He is the third Trump critic to face criminal charges since September.

It was New York City Attorney General Letitia James Charged with bank fraud In October.

Former FBI Director James Comey was charged in late September with lying to Congress.

The cases were filed after Trump urged the US Attorney General to prosecute his political opponents.

“We cannot postpone any longer, this is killing our reputation and credibility,” he wrote on social media.