Sources: John Bolton Sent Classified Emails on Private Server, Intercepted by Hostile Nation

Sources: John Bolton Sent Classified Emails on Private Server, Intercepted by Hostile Nation

People familiar with the inquiry into former National Security Adviser John Bolton provided new insight into the FBI raids of his home and office last week. And the fact pattern bears notable parallels to Hillary Clinton’s email saga.

Sources told The New York Times that Bolton is under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act. He allegedly transmitted classified documents over a private server that were intercepted by a hostile nation.

According to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, U.S. intelligence “gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system.”

Although the “hostile nation” that acquired the documents is not specified in the report, the Times speculates that “Iran, Russia and China all would have had intense interest in his communications while he was the national security adviser.”

The legacy media was quick to assume that President Donald Trump ordered the searches — or more accurately the raids — as retribution against one of his most vocal critics, but this new information suggests there may actually be some “there” there.

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.

Not all of the information contained in the emails was used in Bolton’s book. As a government employee, his manuscript would have been subject to a prepublication review process “to ensure no classified or protected national security information is inadvertently disclosed to the public.” Bolton may have been forced to exclude some of the more sensitive material.

The article notes that no charges have been filed against Bolton. According to the sources:

One major reason for conducting the searches was to see if Mr. Bolton possessed material that matched or corroborated the intelligence agency material, which, if found, would indicate that the emails found in the possession of the foreign spy service were genuine, the people said.

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit in June 2020 to block the book’s release, arguing that “Bolton had breached nondisclosure agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and that the book endangered national security.” This request was denied by a Democratic judge several days later.

The Times reported [Emphasis added]:

The Justice Department around that time also opened a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton had mishandled classified information by disclosing certain details in the book. A judge later concluded he may well have published classified information, but the criminal investigation seemed to languish until the intelligence about his emails was gathered years later.

…

During Mr. Trump’s second term, John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, briefed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, on the information that had been collected about Mr. Bolton’s emails. The officials believed that the material Mr. Bolton had transcribed into the unclassified and unsecured email contained classified information. Each intelligence agency makes its own determinations about what information is classified, so it is often up to the “originating” agency to decide whether particular pieces of information are classified, and how sensitive they are.

Foreign services holding his emails, a judge-approved warrant, and an investigation that quickened under Biden all make the “Trump revenge raid” narrative look thin. The test now is evidentiary: do materials in Bolton’s possession match what U.S. intelligence saw abroad? If yes, he has a legal problem; if not, his critics do.

Bolton is reportedly “in talks to retain the high-profile criminal defense lawyer Abbe Lowell.” Lowell, who is considered one of the best lawyers in Washington, D.C., has represented Jared Kushner and Hunter Biden in the past and is currently defending New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.

We’ll see where this goes.

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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