John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who has since become one of the US president’s biggest Republican critics, surrendered to authorities on Friday to face criminal charges that he mishandled classified information. He was expected to make an initial appearance in court later in the day.
The justice department filed federal charges against Bolton in federal court in Maryland on Thursday, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.
The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.
The indictment marked the third time in recent weeks the justice department has secured criminal charges against one of Trump’s critics.
In response to a question about the charges, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of them but that Bolton was a “bad guy”.
While Bolton parted on sour terms from the White House, the criminal investigation gained momentum during the Biden administration over disclosures that troubled the US intelligence community.
The justice department pursues Espionage Act cases in the event of so-called “aggregating factors”: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction.
“Bolton took detailed notes documenting his day-to-day meetings, activities and briefings. Frequently, Bolton handwrote these notes on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex or in other secure locations, and then later re-wrote his notes in a word processing document,” the indictment said.
“The notes that Bolton sent to Individuals 1 and 2 using his non-governmental personal email accounts and messaging account described in detail Bolton’s daily activities as the National Security Advisor. Often, Bolton’s notes described the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defense and classified information that he was memorializing in his notes.”
In a statement, Bolton said: “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose [Trump’s] abuse of power.”
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client had not engaged in wrongdoing.
“These charges stem from portions of Ambassador Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Lowell said in a statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime.”
The indictment said Bolton used personal email accounts and a group chat that existed during and after his time as national security adviser to share notes and diary entries that contained classified information to two people who did not have security clearances.
“On or about September 24, 2019, fourteen days after he was no longer employed as the National Security Advisor, Bolton left the messaging chat group with Individuals 1 and 2 that he had used to send them more than a thousand pages of notes memorializing his time as National Security Advisor,” the indictment said.
Bolton described Trump as unfit to be president in a memoir he released last year.
The investigation into him was opened in 2022, during Joe Biden’s administration, predating the second Trump administration. Inside the justice department, the case is viewed as different and stronger than the recent prosecutions of former FBI director James Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Reuters contributed reporting
