Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland on 18 felony counts related to the mishandling and transmission of classified information, according to court filings and people familiar with the matter.
The indictment charges Bolton, 76, with eight counts of transmission of national defense information, or NDI, and 10 counts of unlawful retention of NDI. The case was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greenbelt, Maryland, and assigned to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
According to the 26-page indictment, Bolton allegedly used personal email and messaging application accounts to transmit intelligence classified as high as “Top Secret,” including information about foreign adversaries, military operations, and future attack planning. Prosecutors also say he retained at his residence documents containing intelligence on an adversary’s leaders and sources used in U.S. intelligence collection.
Bolton allegedly kept more than 1,000 pages of diaries with highly classified records and shared them with two of his relatives. Following the file sharing, his account was hacked by someone believed to be a representative of Iran, according to the indictment.
The indictment is represented by U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, who heads the national security section of the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, and other career prosecutors. Court records paint a picture of the events during Bolton’s tenure under the first Trump administration, when he was writing his memoir using writings based on classified information, to after he was ousted from his position in September 2019.
An important inflection point of the indictment’s timeline cites an incident on July 6, 2021, under the Biden administration, when a representative for Bolton contacted the FBI to alert agents that “Iran hacked his personal email account.” In an email to the FBI, Bolton’s representative states that “‘evidently someone has gotten into Amb. Bolton’s’ personal email account and that it ‘looks as though it is someone in Iran.'”
U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes for the District of Maryland said her office is “committed to holding accountable anyone who endangers our national security,” while FBI Baltimore Field Office Special Agent in Charge William DelBagno emphasized that “there will be consequences for those who violate this responsibility.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” in announcing the charges. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
FBI agents searched Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington, D.C., office on Aug. 22, seizing cellphones, computers, and folders labeled “Trump I–IV” and a binder titled “Statements and Reflections to Allied Strikes.” Investigators also recovered documents marked “secret” and “confidential” referencing weapons of mass destruction and allied military operations, according to unsealed warrant materials.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the case arose from “meticulous work from dedicated career professionals” who uncovered that Bolton “allegedly transmitted top secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house in direct violation of federal law.”
Bolton has maintained that he is innocent. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said Thursday that the “underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago,” adding that keeping diaries “is not a crime.”
“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,” Lowell said. “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.”
The criminal investigation into Bolton traces back to the final months of President Donald Trump’s first term and quietly continued during the Biden administration, before intensifying earlier this year under Bondi. That extended timeline distinguishes the case from recent indictments of James Comey and Letitia James, both of which originated after Trump’s return to power.
During Trump’s first term, the DOJ’s investigation initially centered on Bolton’s 2020 book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which the government said contained information based on classified material. While a federal judge allowed the book’s publication, he agreed Bolton likely disclosed sensitive and classified information without final clearance.
After Trump left office in 2021, the FBI kept an investigation open at a lower level that did not progress. The investigation became more active this year when CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly gave Patel limited access to CIA-collected intelligence gathered overseas that indicated that a foreign entity had accessed Bolton’s personal email account. That tip led investigators to recenter the case, culminating in the August searches of his properties in Maryland and Washington.
Prior to the indictment on Thursday, a partially unsealed affidavit from the FBI detailed a section labeled “Hack of Bolton’s AOL Account by Foreign Entity,” which described how U.S. intelligence discovered the intrusion during surveillance of a foreign government.
Bolton was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush before joining Trump’s national security team in 2018.
If convicted, Bolton faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of unlawful retention of NDI and 10 years for each count of transmission of NDI. He is expected to surrender himself to federal authorities on Friday and will be arraigned on a later date.
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Trump said he had only learned of the indictment when asked by reporters.
“I didn’t know that, you’re telling me for the first time,” he said. “But I think he’s, you know, a bad person. I think he’s a bad guy. Yeah, he’s a bad guy, it’s too bad, but it’s the way it goes. That’s the way it goes, right?”
WHAT TO KNOW AS POSSIBLE CHARGES LOOM FOR EX-TRUMP ADVISER JOHN BOLTON
The former national security adviser has made a name for himself as one of the most vocal critics of Trump despite having been part of his inner circle, frequently taking to the airwaves to criticize the president’s foreign policy work. After Bolton’s ouster in 2019 due to public and private policy clashes, he called Trump “unfit for office” and “reckless in matters of national security.”
Trump has referred to Bolton as a “lowlife” and a very “unpatriotic guy” and previously denied having any foreknowledge of the FBI raid on Bolton’s home earlier this year.
