Trump Adviser-Turned-Foe John Bolton Indicted in Maryland

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland on charges related to the mishandling of classified information.

Bolton is said to have shared extremely sensitive documents dealing with national security matters through an AOL email account that he operated personally following his appointment in the first Trump administration.

Bolton’s home was raided by the FBI in August. 

The 26-page indictment accuses Bolton of a total of 18 counts of unlawfully retaining national defense information and unlawfully transmitting national defense information. Bolton, 76, could face decades in prison if convicted of just some of the charges.

The indictment contends that Bolton “abused his position as national security adviser by sharing with family members more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities.”

In a statement, Bolton defended his actions, saying he was “the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those [President Donald Trump] deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.”

He added:

My book was reviewed and approved by the appropriate, experienced career clearance officials. When my e-mail was hacked in 2021, the FBI was made fully aware. In four years of the prior administration, after these reviews, no charges were ever filed.

Then came Trump 2 who embodies what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said, ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’

Bolton became an ardent critic of President Donald Trump after he was fired in September 2019 as the president’s national security adviser during his first term. He earned a reported $2 million advance for his political memoir discussing his time in the Trump White House. The Justice Department argued before a federal judge that the book contained sensitive information that could hurt national security.

Bolton previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. 

This is a breaking news story and might be updated.