Trump adviser turned critic John Bolton indicted over handling of classified documents

Geoff Bennett:

Welcome to the "News Hour."

A federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former National Security Adviser John Bolton today on 18 charges of retaining and transmitting classified information to two of his relatives. The indictment comes two months after FBI agents raided Bolton's home and office and, according to court filings, found documents labeled as classified.

Amna Nawaz:

Now, Bolton served as U.N. ambassador and then national security adviser in the first Trump administration before emerging as one of the president's most vocal critics.

Joining us to discuss this is Mary McCord. She's a former acting U.S. assistant attorney general for national security. She now heads the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.

Mary, welcome back and thanks for joining us.

Just briefly set us up here. What exactly is the indictment alleging that Bolton did when it comes to these classified documents?

Mary McCord, Former Justice Department Official:

So these are serious charges. There are 18 counts in this indictment.

Eight of them involve him actually transmitting classified information, national defense information over his personal Gmail account, as well as other nongovernment messaging apps, while he was the national security adviser and transmitting classified information that he was learning, at least based on the allegations in the indictment, that he was learning every day.

Some of those are alleged to have started with things like "the intel briefer said' or "while I was in the Situation Room." And he was charged with transmitting those to two people related to him. I'm hearing some reporting it might be his wife and daughter, two people related to him who, of course, don't have security clearances and weren't entitled to have access to that information.

But, perhaps more dangerously, transmitting them over those unsecure e-mail and unsecure applications resulted in his e-mail being hacked by suspected Iranian hackers. And this is a very serious security breach.

The other counts, the other 10 counts are basically the retaining of hard copy documents and digital evidence of those same documents, those same eight documents that he was charged with transmitting, plus two additional classified documents. And these cover — and they're described very briefly in the indictment — serious national defense information, revealing sources and methods, things that came from human intel, signals intelligence, attack planning by foreign adversaries, that kind of thing.

So it's a — if these facts are accurate, it's a very serious indictment.

Amna Nawaz:

Mary, we should remind people too, Mr. Bolton was investigated in the first Trump administration about his book, specifically back then for disclosing classified information, not getting proper preclearance. That investigation was later dropped.

And we have a response in part from his attorney today, who references that first investigation and says: "The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. Like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries. That is not a crime."

Is it clear to us this case is separate from that investigation?

Mary McCord:

Well, this indictment has a paragraph that says, none of the counts charged, so none of the documents that are the basis for the counts I just described, are anything that appeared in his book.

So, to the extent that that investigation was about failure to obtain the proper prepublication review, either he never tried to include this information in it or it was information that was excluded upon review. But that doesn't change whether it was transmitted in a way that was not secure and that is unlawful to people who are not entitled to receive it.

Certainly, diaries are kept. Other public — national security officials have been prosecuted for things like keeping diaries, David Petraeus among them. And, certainly, I will also indicate the charges against Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case involved retention, not transmission, but — while there were some allegations of transmission, but not counts related to it.

But it also involved retention of hundreds of classified documents in places that they cannot be stored. So these are things that have sometimes resulted in prosecutions. And then, of course, with Donald Trump, it did not. That prosecution was dismissed by Judge Cannon and ultimately did not move forward.

Amna Nawaz:

And, Mary, briefly, if we can hear, we know Bolton's now the latest in a series of Trump's critics to be charged by federal prosecutors. We saw James Comey indicted in late September, Letitia James earlier this month.

Compared to these — or those two cases, rather, how does this case compare?

Mary McCord:

I mean, this definitely seems like it was prosecuted at least partly for political reasons, because Mr. Bolton is an enemy of the president.

But this allegation, these allegations are more serious, to my opinion as a former prosecutor, than what we see in both the James and Comey indictments. Those seem like prosecuting a person and trying to find some offense, no matter how small. These are things that definitely in my time in national security would have warranted investigation.

There may be explanations, right, that we don't know, but based on the face of the indictment, these are very different charges.

Amna Nawaz:

All right, Mary McCord, thank you, as always, for your time and insights. We appreciate it.