Foreign Spies Intercepted Bolton’s Classified Emails

John Bolton, the former US national security adviser, came under investigation during Joe Biden’s presidency for mishandling classified material, it has been reported.

Emails from Bolton containing sensitive material were found in data gathered from another country’s spy service, according to The New York Times.

Bolton’s home and offices were raided by the FBI last week in what some characterised as an act of retribution by Donald Trump against his highly critical former aide.

However, the New York Times report suggests the investigation into Bolton had gathered steam even before Trump returned to office in January and installed loyalists to head the intelligence agencies.

Bolton is alleged to have sent emails on an unclassified system containing state secrets to people helping him gather material for his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which was published in 2020.

The information, said to have come from classified documents seen during his tenure as national security adviser, was reportedly intercepted by the spy service of an adversarial country.

The reporting does not name the country, although Russia, China, and Iran would all have had particular interest in his communications as national security adviser.

Sources said a major reason for the search of Bolton’s home and offices in Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday was to see if he held material that would match and corroborate the material held by the foreign spy agency.

Officials have indicated the remit for the raid went beyond longstanding allegations about his memoir, and would address claims he leaked sensitive materials.

In order to obtain the search warrants, authorised by two federal judges, prosecutors would have had to show they had reason to believe the 76-year-old had mishandled classified information.

The fact that authorities were able to show probable cause to believe that Bolton had mishandled information and that the locations searched could show evidence of wrongdoing suggests the investigation into Bolton is already relatively advanced.

During Trump’s first presidential term, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into whether Bolton had disclosed classified information in his memoir. But this, along with an associated civil lawsuit, was dropped in June 2021 during Joe Biden’s administration.

Bolton declined to comment to The New York Times. Representatives for the former national security adviser have been independently approached by The Telegraph.

Bolton has refrained from directly commenting on the raid itself, instead continuing to criticise Trump for what he called his “incoherent” policy to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump faced dozens of felony charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents in a criminal indictment brought against him in 2023.

After he left the White House following his first term, the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate and found boxes of state secrets in a bathroom, a ballroom and a shower, in what prosecutors claimed was a violation of the Espionage Act.

It was eventually dismissed last year when a judge ruled that the appointment of the lawyer prosecuting him was unconstitutional.