John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser before becoming a vocal critic of the president, has been criminally indicted on federal charges, and is facing decades in prison.
The Department of Justice presented a case to a grand jury in Maryland on Thursday, and they agreed there was enough evidence to indict Bolton.
It comes after FBI agents searched Bolton’s home and office in August as part of an investigation into the handling of classified information.
The indictment makes Bolton, 76, the third of the US president’s political opponents to face charges in recent week, after former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
According to a 26-page indictment filed at a court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday, Bolton is charged with eight counts of transmission of national defence information (NDI) and 10 counts of unlawful retention of NDI.
Prosecutors accuse him of illegally transmitting top secret information about US national defence using his personal email and other messaging apps.
“These documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations,” the document states.
It adds: “These documents included intelligence on an adversary’s leaders as well as information revealing sources and collections used to obtain statements on a foreign adversary.”
If found guilty, Bolton could face up to 10 years in prison for each charge.
“There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement announcing the charges.
“Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
Bolton has not yet commented, but he has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, earlier said Bolton had handled records appropriately. He is expected to surrender to authorities on Friday.
According to CNN, Bolton is alleged to have shared the information with his wife and daughter. The indictment does not say who he is accused of providing the information to, describing them as “Individuals 1 and 2”.
Both individuals are “related” to Bolton, and have never held a US security clearance, prosecutors say.
The unauthorised information includes “diary-like entries from Bolton’s time as the National Security Advisor” and were allegedly “printed and stored” at Bolton’s home in Maryland.
Bolton was fired from Trump’s first administration in 2019. His 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, recounted his time working under Trump and portrayed him as a president who was ill-informed about geopolitics and whose decision-making was dominated by a desire to be re-elected. (BBC)
