Ex-Trump national security adviser Bolton charged with storing and
sharing classified information
[October 17, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — John Bolton, who served as national security
adviser to President Donald Trump during his first term and later became
a vocal critic of the Republican leader, was charged Thursday with
storing top secret records at home and sharing with relatives diary-like
notes about his time in government that contained classified
information.
The 18-count indictment also suggests classified information was exposed
when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian regime hacked
Bolton's email account and gained access to sensitive material he had
shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI in 2021 that his emails had
been hacked, prosecutors say, but did not reveal he had shared
classified information through the account or that the hackers now had
possession of government secrets.
The indictment sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering
on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became
known for his hawkish views on American power and who served for more
than a year in Trump's first administration before being fired in 2019
and publishing a scathingly critical book about the president.
The case, the third against a Trump adversary in the last month, will
also unfold against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department
is pursuing the president's political enemies while at the same time
sparing his allies from scrutiny. Bolton foreshadowed that argument in a
defiant statement Thursday in which he denied the charges and called
them part of an “intensive effort" by Trump to “intimidate his
opponents.”
“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice
Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that
were declined before or distort the facts,” he said.
Even so, the indictment is significantly more detailed in its
allegations than earlier cases against former FBI Director James Comey
and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Unlike the other two cases
filed over the last month by a hastily appointed U.S. attorney, this one
was signed by career national security prosecutors. And though the
investigation burst into public view in August when the FBI searched
Bolton's home in Maryland and his office in Washington, the inquiry was
already well underway by the time Trump took office a second time this
past January.
Sharing of classified secrets
The indictment, filed in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, alleges
that between 2018 and this past August, Bolton shared with two relatives
more than 1,000 pages of information about his day-to-day activities in
government.
The material included “diary-like” entries with information classified
as high as top secret that he had learned from meetings with other U.S.
government officials, from intelligence briefings or talks with foreign
leaders, according to the indictment. After sending one document, Bolton
wrote in a message to his relatives, “None of which we talk about!!!” In
response, one of his relatives wrote, “Shhhhh,” prosecutors said.
The indictment says that among the material shared was information about
foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources
and methods used by the government to collect intelligence. One document
related to a foreign adversary’s plans for a missile launch, while
another detailed U.S. government plans for covert action and included
intelligence blaming an adversary for an attack, court papers say.
The two family members were not identified in court papers, but a person
familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss
non-public details, identified them as Bolton's wife and daughter.
“There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pam
Bondi said in a statement. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and
jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is
above the law.”
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The indictment also suggests Bolton was aware of the impropriety of
sharing classified information with people not authorized to receive
it, citing an April news media interview in which he chastised Trump
administration officials for using Signal to discuss sensitive
military details. Though the anecdote is meant by prosecutors to
show Bolton understood proper protocol for government secrets,
Bolton's legal team may also point to it to argue a double standard
in enforcement since the Justice Department is not known to have
opened any investigation into the Signal episode.
Bolton's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that the
“underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years
ago.”
He said the charges stem from portions of Bolton's personal diaries
over his 45-year career in government and included unclassified
information that was shared only with his immediate family and was
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,”
Lowell said.
Controversy over a book
Bolton suggested the criminal case was an outgrowth of an
unsuccessful Justice Department effort after he left government to
block the publication of his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened,"
which portrayed Trump as grossly misinformed about foreign policy.
The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript contained
classified information that could harm national security if exposed.
Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a
White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had
worked for months, said the manuscript no longer had classified
information.
“These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but
his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he
alone determines what is said about his conduct,” Bolton said in a
statement.
Bolton also served in the Justice Department during President Ronald
Reagan's administration and was a State Department point person on
arms control during George W. Bush's presidency.
Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable
to win Senate confirmation and resigned after serving 17 months as a
Bush recess appointment. That allowed him to hold the job on a
temporary basis without Senate confirmation.
In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump's third national
security adviser. But his brief tenure was characterized by disputes
with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.
Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump
announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted
Bolton’s resignation.
Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy
and government in his book, including by alleging that Trump
directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s
willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon
to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his
family.
Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a
“crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War
Six.”
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Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.
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