A Maryland federal grand jury indicted John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, on Thursday.
The grand jury indicted Bolton on 18 counts for allegedly mishandling confidential documents: eight counts of Transmission of National Defense Information and ten counts of Retention of National Defense Information.
Bolton allegedly used an AOL email account to send diary-like notes to his wife and daughter.
The FBI raided Bolton’s home in August.
The investigation began several years ago over “stealing classified documents and weaponizing them for political purposes.”
The Biden administration shut down the investigation, but the Trump administration’s FBI reopened it.
We found out a few days later that Bolton allegedly sent classified documents on a private server, and a hostile nation intercepted them. As Elizabeth wrote:
The Times emphasized that in order to obtain warrants for the searches, the FBI “would have had to show that they had reason to believe that Mr. Bolton possessed evidence that showed he could have mishandled classified information.”Additionally, the sources said the investigation picked up steam during the Biden administration, which was when intelligence agents learned that another country had obtained Bolton’s emails. At the time the emails were sent, Bolton was working on his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. The emails were sent “to people close to him who were helping him gather material” for the book.
Professor Jonathan Turley wrote (I cannot copy and paste from the indictment and my hand hurts):
…The indictment recounts numerous alleged incidents of transmitting classified information to third parties as opposed to the removal of actual documents. Notably, Count 6 is described as the revelation of “intelligence concerning a foreign country’s interactions with an adversary; in quotation marks direct statement collected via intelligence source and methods on a foreign country.” This was allegedly Top secret information. It allegedly included foreign intelligence describing an adversary’s planned attack on a facility.”…Count 9 is described as Av2 “reveals intelligence about future attack by adversarial group in another country.” It is rated at Top Secret/SI. Count 11 “reveals intelligence that a foreign adversary was planning a missile launch in the future.” Others concern covert programs by the U.S…
In September, an FBI agent told Politico that agents found classified documents during their search.
Man, this will be another stain on the Biden administration if the prosecutors can prove their case. I think we all know why Biden’s DOJ closed it down…Bolton has become such a loudmouth anti-Trump talking head.
Even CNN couldn’t believe the supposed actions of Bolton. I encourage you to watch the video because the reporter could not hide her amazement at what Bolton allegedly did:
Katelyn Polantz: John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, a long time federal government official, has been indicted by a grand jury. We are learning that through two different sources, from our producer, Hannah Rabinowitz at the Justice Department, and we have confirmed that the grand jury was in today with the lead prosecutor on that case, the same prosecutor who had been on some of the documents of the search of Bolton’s house just two months ago, or not even two months ago, a prosecutor who also has some experience in investigating these sorts of things. He was a prosecutor that was also working on the Biden classified documents, handling investigation that led to no charges.But in this situation, the bulk of this case, it’s been going on for several years, and our understanding is that it’s about John Bolton’s use of an email account with AOL, an email account where he was writing diary like notes and summaries of his time as National Security Advisor to himself, at times, even sending them to his wife and daughter.And that is the sort of thing that the Justice Department does say frequently, not just in the climate of a Trump administration, that that’s something that you should not do. We have seen many charges like this before of other high ranking officials, and that also with John Bolton in those search warrants. And what we’re very likely to see in court going forward is that the Justice Department saying he should have known better.
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