Bolton Indictment Expected Next Week

John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump turned prominent Trump critic, is expected to be charged with federal crimes soon, according to two federal officials with knowledge of the investigation.

One of the officials said Bolton could be indicted next week. The other said he could be indicted soon.

The charges would be brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where Bolton lives, the officials said. The development was first reported by MSNBC.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to discuss matters related to a grand jury.

“As a matter of law, we will not discuss any grand jury matters with the media, but this Justice Department is united as one team in our mission to make America safe again,” the spokesman said. “And the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, along with the entire team at Main Justice continue to empower our US Attorneys to pursue justice in every case.”

The FBI conducted searches of Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington, D.C., office in August. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News at the time that the searches were part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records.”

Lowell, Bolton’s lawyer, has repeatedly said that documents with classified markings kept by Bolton dated back to the George W. Bush administration, when Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and would be typical of those kept by a long-time government employee.

CIA information prompted searches

CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided intelligence to FBI Director Kash Patel that was the basis for the search warrant, the source said. Bolton served as one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first term before a contentious exit.

The searches were focused on Bolton’s handling of classified materials and potential instances of such documents being used in leaks to news media, the source said at the time. They added that it was related to a criminal investigation that began during the Biden administration.

Search warrant affidavits related to the searches released last month referenced potential violations of the Espionage Act, including gathering or sharing national defense information without permission, and unauthorized possession of classified materials.

Trump publicly called for Bolton to be prosecuted in June 2020 after the then-former national security adviser wrote an unflattering book about his experience working for Trump.

“He released massive amounts of classified, and confidential, but classified information. That’s illegal and you go to jail for that,” Trump told Fox News in an interview then.

Bolton maintained that he had fulfilled his legal obligations and obtained a letter from a National Security Council official in 2020 which said the book contained no classified material.

Trump was indicted in 2023 on charges of mishandling top-secret documents and obstructing efforts to recover them after he left office. But federal judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, threw out the charges in 2024.