Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was indicted Thursday by a grand jury for allegedly illegally transmitting and retaining classified documents.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Maryland, charges Bolton with eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information, as well as 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information.
Prosecutors accuse Bolton of using a personal non-government email account and a messaging app to transmit at least eight documents to unauthorized people that contained information classified at levels ranging from secret to top secret.
Seven of the transmissions allegedly occurred during Bolton’s time serving as Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and 2019, while Bolton allegedly sent another document just days after President Donald Trump removed him from the administration in September 2019.
The move comes on the heels of indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, as President Donald Trump continues what critics call a campaign of retaliation against his perceived political enemies.
Bolton has been a target of Trump’s ire since leaving the first Trump administration and publishing a tell-all book. Federal agents in August. They searched Bolton’s residence in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., office related to allegations that Bolton possessed classified information.
Prosecutors say one of the documents listed in the indictment “reveals information about future attacks by an adversary group in another country.” Others allegedly contain information about foreign partners sharing sensitive information with the US intelligence community; intelligence related to a foreign adversary’s missile launch plans; intelligence on leaders of a US adversary; and another that detailed plans for covert action by the United States government.
Former national security advisor John Bolton listens to a question from a student at the John F. Kennedy Jr Forum at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 29, 2025.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
“There is one level of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and endangers our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
The ten documents that the indictment alleges were illegally retained by Bolton were allegedly seized during searches of his home and office in August, and contained information similar to documents Bolton allegedly transmitted illegally during his time as national security adviser.
Bolton’s attorneys have denied that he ever mishandled classified information and said documents investigators found in a search of his home and residence were no longer considered classified.
Bolton has denied illegally removing classified materials from his time in government and has said no such information was published in his 2019 memoir “The Room Where It Happened.”
The investigation is being conducted out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, unlike the Comey and James investigations that are being led by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, who sources say brought Comey and James’ charges against the advice of career prosecutors.
Comey, accused of lying to Congress, and James, accused of mortgage fraud, have denied any wrongdoing.
Last month, a federal judge unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit prosecutors had gathered to execute the court-authorized search of Bolton’s home. Most of the document concerned allegations surrounding the publication of Bolton’s book, which the first Trump administration unsuccessfully sued to block.
The federal judge who oversaw that lawsuit expressed serious concerns about whether Bolton had included highly classified information in his book that could potentially compromise national security.
On the day Bolton’s home and office were searched, Trump said he was “not aware” of the searches, but later called Bolton a “sleazebag.” Referencing the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 in his own classified documents case, Trump told reporters that searching his home is “not a good feeling.”
Triumph pleaded not guilty in June 2023 to 40 criminal charges related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House in 2021, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart government efforts to recover the documents.
After Trump was re-elected president last November, the case was dropped due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.
Trump, when asked about Bolton in an interview with Fox News in the Oval Office in June 2022, said: “He took classified information and published it during a presidency. It’s one thing to write a book after. During. And I think he’s a criminal and I think, frankly, he should go to jail for that, and that will probably, possibly happen. That’s what should happen.”
Pierre Thomas of ABC News contributed to this report.
