Former National Security Advisor John Bolton turned himself in to federal authorities Friday morning in Maryland and pleaded not guilty after being indicted on charges of keeping top secret documents at his home and sharing classified information with family members.
Bolton was ordered released from custody after making his court appearance.
His criminal case is the third brought by the Justice Department in recent weeks against someone deemed adversarial to President Donald Trump. It also amplifies concerns that Trump is using the nation’s top law enforcement agency to punish political foes.
Bolton didn’t comment to reporters as he entered the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, about 13 miles (21 kilometers) northeast of Washington.
But he said Thursday in a statement after a grand jury returned the 18-count indictment against him that he has “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.”
Here is what to know about Bolton and the charges he faces:
Who is John Bolton?
The 76-year-old Bolton is a longtime Republican who spent more than a year as National Security Advisor during Trump’s first term.
His 17-month tenure was rife with clashes over countries including North Korea and Iran, with him voicing skepticism over Trump’s outreach toward and summit with Kim Jong Un. On Iran, Bolton backed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal but favored regime change and was frustrated when Trump called off a planned military strike in 2019.
The Republican president fired Bolton in 2019 and the two continued to clash in public comments long after Bolton left office.
Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” was released in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and was highly critical of Trump and his first term in the White House.
The Trump administration sued to block the book’s release, claiming it disclosed classified information, but the Justice Department under President Joe Biden abandoned the lawsuit in 2021.
Bolton’s Maryland home was searched in late August by federal agents.
Charges levied against Bolton
The indictment, which was brought against Bolton on Thursday, also accuses him of sharing with his wife and daughter more than 1,000 pages of notes that included sensitive national defense information he had gleaned from meetings with other U.S. government officials and foreign leaders or from intelligence briefings. Authorities say some of the information was exposed when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s email account he used to send the diary-like notes about his activities to his relatives.
“Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Thursday.
The indictment cited an April news media interview in which Bolton chastised Trump administration officials for using Signal to discuss sensitive military details.
Authorities say Bolton took meticulous notes about his meetings and briefings as national security adviser and then used a personal email account and messaging platform to share information classified as high as top secret with his family members.
The indictment also says that a Bolton representative told the FBI in July 2021 that his email account had been hacked by operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government but did not reveal he had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers now had possession of government secrets.
Other enemies of Trump targeted
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, was indicted earlier this month in a mortgage fraud case. She was charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020.
James has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times. She won a staggering judgment last year against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements.
An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.
Former FBI Director James Comey was charged in September with lying to Congress. The charges against Comey followed Trump appearing to publicly urge Bondi to prosecute Comey and other perceived political enemies.
Comey had been involved in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, an investigation that Trump has claimed to be “hoax” and a “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican’s campaign.
Comey was fired during Trump’s first term.
