Politics
JUST IN: Federal Grand Jury Weighs Charges Against John Bolton
A federal grand jury convened on Wednesday afternoon in order to consider charges against former National Security Adviser John Bolton over his alleged sharing of classified materials on a private email server.
The proceeding comes two months after FBI agents conducted searches of Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland home and downtown D.C. office building.
According to a publicly released inventory, investigators seized three computers, two iPhones and reams of documents from Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland home. The FBI also confirmed that Bolton is under criminal investigation for potentially mishandling classified documents and could soon face criminal charges.
A warrant also confirmed that Bolton is being investigated for allegedly violating two sections of the Espionage Act of 1917, which prohibits unauthorized removal or possession of national defense information.
In addition to the electronic devices, agents seized two USB drives, a hard drive, four boxes of “printed daily activities,” “typed documents in folders labeled ‘Trump I – IV’” and a white binder labeled “statements and reflections to allied strikes,” according to the inventory log.
Bolton, 76, served in President Donald Trump’s cabinet from 2018 through the following year and has since become a vehement critic. A longtime advocate of interventions in foreign wars, Bolton has frequently criticized Trump’s foreign policy moves and cheered on the Biden DOJ’s indictments against him in 2020.
According to a report from the New York Post, Justice Department officials expect an indictment to be handed down in the case as early as Thursday. One source described the case against him as “air tight.”
Last week, NBC News reported that prosecutors were merely considering whether to seek a grand jury indictment or speed the process along by filing a direct court complaint.
Then-National Security Advisor John Bolton speaks during a trip to Ukraine in 2018
Accusations against Bolton first surfaced in 2020, when the Trump Administration filed a lawsuit attempting to block the release of his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” The government argued that Bolton did not go through the proper vetting process with the National Security Council when drafting the book, a mandatory process for government officials seeking to publish works that may contain classified information.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth refused to block the publication, but only because it was too late. He did conclude, however, that Bolton “likely published classified materials” and had “exposed his country to harm.” He later allowed the wider lawsuit to go forward, which was ultimately dismissed by the Biden Administration in 2021.
On August 27, the New York Times reported that the United States was able to gather data from a spy service belonging to an adversarial nation indicating that Bolton, during his tenure with the Trump Administration in 2019, shared emails that may have contained classified information. The emails were sent to several people close to Bolton through an unsecured server, sources familiar with the investigation told The Times.
