by Techno Fog:
John Bolton, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor (NSA), has been indicted by a grand jury for the District of Maryland. Here is the indictment.
In total, Bolton faces 18 felony counts: 8 counts of transmission of national defense information (18 USC § 793(d)) and 10 counts of retention of national defense information (18 USC § 793(e)) – charges that fall under the Espionage Act.
Bolton served as President Trump’s NSA from April 9, 2018 to September 10, 2019. His term was fairly short-lived, as Trump and Bolton didn’t agree on many matters, with Bolton advocating harder lines as opposed to the naturally deal-making Trump.
What the public didn’t know – until this afternoon’s release of the indictment – was that during his time as NSA, Bolton abused his position “by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor – including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level – with two individuals.”
Those individuals are identified as “Individual 1” and “Individual 2” in the indictment. In one message, Bolton referred to them as his “editors.” MSNBC, which would most certainly have the ability to contact Bolton directly, is reporting that they are his wife and daughter.
It’s curious that Bolton would refer to his wife and daughter as his “editors.” There is little doubt that they helped Bolton put together, or at least compile his notes, for his memoir The Room Where It Happened, which was released in June 2020 and was exceptionally critical of Trump. And the messages from his wife/daughter seem to confirm as much, as they commented on their edits and their review of the documents.
by Joyce Vance
John Bolton has been charged by a grand jury in the District of Maryland with 18 counts of mishandling classified information in violation of the Espionage Act, 18 USC 793. He is charged with eight counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of unlawfully retaining it in his possession. The information Bolton is charged in connection with was classified at the secret and top secret levels.
Donald Trump weighed in: “I think he’s a bad person,” he said of his former National Security Advisor.
The indictment is entirely different from the two we’ve seen against Jim Comey and Letitia James out of the Eastern District of Virginia. For one thing, as we discussed earlier this week, the U.S. Attorney in Maryland is a career prosecutor. But she didn’t go into the grand jury to obtain the indictment. It’s signed off on by two senior prosecutors in her office as well as lawyers from DOJ’s National Security Division. Instead of the factually deficient indictments we’ve seen in the other cases, this is the sort of detailed indictment we are used to seeing in a serious matter. The factual predicate for the charges against Bolton is 20 pages, laid out in detail by professional prosecutors. Each count appears in a graph, as the first eight do here, with details about the documents involved.
That’s not to say that the case against Bolton will inevitably succeed, but it does appear to be a strong case. The allegations are serious. The indictment lays out an ongoing pattern by Bolton of using personal email accounts to transmit information to two unnamed relatives while he was with the government, apparently diary-type entries accompanied by communications to the two that suggested Bolton was compiling information to be used in future writing projects. Bolton has bigger problems than Comey and James, based on the evidence laid out in the indictment.
In one of the most damaging sections in the indictment, there is a revelation that in July of 2021, Bolton’s representatives advised the FBI his email account had been hacked, and he suspected Iran was behind it. The indictment goes on to state Bolton never told the FBI he had been sending classified information in emails using this account, nor did he tell them that all of that information was now in the possession of whoever had done the hack.
The major issue prosecutors face in a case like this is proving the defendant’s state of mind. They have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted intentionally and willfully. It has to be more than negligence. That will be a key issue in this case, and because it’s a dispute over the facts, it will be up to a jury to make that decision.
Unless Bolton decides to plead guilty, that’s likely where this case is headed. In a similar situation involving allegations that he shared information with a woman he was having an affair with, who was also his biographer, General David Petraeus pled guilty during the Obama administration to one misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. The charge was a misdemeanor, and he got two years of probation. At least as of now, there is no reporting on whether Bolton was offered a similar deal in advance of indictment, although it seems unlikely given the moment. Each of the charges against Bolton is a felony. He faces a maximum penalty of ten years in prison for each one
Bolton’s defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, issued a statement: “The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. These charges stem from portions of Amb. 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. Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime. We look forward to proving once again that Amb. Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information.”
Bolton also issued a statement:
Less of a Hawk and More of a Turkey