President Donald Trump‘s former national security adviser, John Bolton, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland on charges related to the mishandling of classified information, according to court filings and people familiar with the matter.
The indictment, brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greenbelt, Maryland, was not immediately available for public viewing but was listed on online federal court records Thursday afternoon. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
Federal 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.
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, did not respond to a request for comment but said last month that an “objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton.”
The criminal investigation into Bolton traces back to the final months of Trump’s first term and quietly continued during the Biden administration, before intensifying earlier this year under Attorney General Pam 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 ultimately 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 ultimately progress. The investigation became more active this year when CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly gave FBI Director Kash 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.
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, 76, was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush before joining Trump’s national security team in 2018.
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 previously 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.