Ex-US NSA John Bolton indicted on 18 counts over espionage charges

In the latest attack against US President Donald Trump’s rivals , the Department of Justice has filed federal charges against former National Security Advisor John Bolton . Before turning into Trump’s biggest critic, Bolton served as the Republican firebrand’s NSA from 2018 to 2019 and continues to remain Trump’s longest-serving security adviser.

The Department of Justice accused Bolton of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act. On Thursday, a grand jury in Maryland handed an 18-count indictment to Bolton. The former NSA was charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser. The DoJ maintained that many of these entries contained highly classified information.

When asked about the latest indictment against another political rival, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of it. However, the American leader went on to call Bolton a ‘bad guy’. Interestingly, the investigation against Bolton actually gained momentum during the Biden administration over disclosures that troubled the US intelligence community.

What the indictment against Bolton entails

It is pertinent to note that the US DoJ pursues Espionage Act cases in the event of so-called “aggregating factors”, such as willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction.

“BOLTON took detailed notes documenting his day-to-day meetings, activities, and briefings. Frequently, BOLTON handwrote these notes on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex or in other secure locations, and then later re-wrote his notes in a word processing document,” the indictment against the former NSA read.

“The notes that BOLTON sent to Individuals 1 and 2 using his non-governmental personal email accounts and messaging account described in detail BOLTON’s daily activities as the National Security Advisor. Often, BOLTON’s notes described the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defence and classified information that he was memorialising in his notes.”

Meanwhile, in a response statement, Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell argued that his client had not engaged in wrongdoing. “These charges stem from portions of Ambassador Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Lowell said. “Like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime.”

The indictment accused Bolton of using personal email accounts and a group chat that existed during and after his tenure as national security adviser to share notes and diary entries containing classified information with two individuals who did not have security clearances.

“On or about September 24, 2019, fourteen days after he was no longer employed as the National Security Advisor, BOLTON left the messaging chat group with Individuals 1 and 2 that he had used to send them more than a thousand pages of notes memorialising his time as National Security Advisor,” the indictment said.

The indictment came months after the FBI searched Bolton’s home in Maryland and his office in Washington. From there, they retrieved boxes of papers, computer files and other materials. Court filings related to the case later showed some of those materials had low-level classification markings.

‘I have become the latest target’: Bolton

Reacting to his indictment, the former NSA said that he had become the “latest target” in the president’s weaponisation of the Department of Justice. “For four decades, I have devoted my life to America’s foreign policy and national security. I would never compromise those goals. I tried to do that during my tenure in the first Trump administration, but resigned when it became impossible to do so,” he said in a statement published by CNN.

“Donald Trump’s retribution against me began then, continued when he tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of my book, The Room Where It Happened, before the 2020 election, and became one of his rallying cries in his re-election campaign.”

“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponising the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” he furthered. In the statement, Bolton accused Trump of an “abuse of power”, saying the president embodied “what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said: ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’”