Trump advisor-turned-critic John Bolton is accused of handling classified documents

Jeff Bennett:

Welcome to the News Hour.

Today, a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton on 18 counts of keeping classified information and passing it on 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 classified as classified.

Amna Nawaz:

Now, Bolton served as UN ambassador and then national security adviser in Trump’s first administration before becoming one of the president’s most vocal critics.

Joining us to discuss this is Mary McCord. She is a former US Deputy Attorney General for National Security. She now heads the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.

Maryam, welcome back and thank you for joining us.

Just briefly put us here. What exactly does the indictment allege Bolton did when it came to these secret documents?

Mary McCord, former Justice Department official:

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

Eight of them involve him actually transmitting classified information, national defense information through his personal Gmail account, as well as other non-government messaging applications, while he was a National Security Advisor 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 these allegedly began with things like “the intelligence provider said” or “while I was in the operating room.” He was accused of passing this information to two people associated with him. I heard some reports that it might be his wife and daughter, who are people related to him, and of course they do not have security clearances and have no right to access that information.

But perhaps more seriously, sending these messages via email and insecure applications led to his email being compromised by suspected Iranian hackers. This is a very serious security breach.

The other charges, the other 10 charges are basically keeping hard copies and digital evidence of those same documents, the same eight documents that he was tasked with transferring, plus two additional confidential documents. And these cover – and they were described very briefly in the indictment – serious national defense information, revealing sources and methods, things that came from human intelligence, intelligence signals, attack planning by foreign adversaries, that kind of thing.

Therefore, if these facts are accurate, it is a very serious indictment.

Amna Nawaz:

Mary, we should also remind people, that Mr. Bolton was investigated in the first Trump administration over his book, specifically at that time for disclosing classified information, and not obtaining proper prior authorization. This investigation was later dropped.

We have a partial response from his attorney today, who points to the first investigation and says: “The basic facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. Like many government officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept a daily diary. This is not a crime.”

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

Mary McCord:

Well, this indictment has a paragraph that says, none of the charges were filed, so none of the documents that form the basis of the charges that I just described, did not appear in his book.

Therefore, to the extent that this investigation was related to a failure to obtain proper review prior to publication, he either never attempted to include this information in it or it was information that was left out upon review. But this does not change whether it has been transferred in an unsafe and illegal way to people who are not entitled to receive it.

Sure, diaries are kept. Other national security officials have been prosecuted for things like keeping diaries, including David Petraeus. And of course, I will also point out that the charges against Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case are for retention, not transfer, but – while there were some allegations of transfer, but not the charges related to it.

But it also included keeping hundreds of confidential documents in places where they could not be stored. These are the things that have sometimes led to prosecutions. And then, of course, with Donald Trump, that didn’t happen. This claim was rejected by Judge Cannon and ultimately did not go forward.

Amna Nawaz:

And Mary, in short, if we could hear, we know that Bolton is now the latest in a string of Trump critics who have been indicted by federal prosecutors. We saw the indictment of James Comey in late September, and Letitia James earlier this month.

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

Mary McCord:

I mean, this certainly sounds like he was being prosecuted at least in part for political reasons, because Mr. Bolton is an enemy of the president.

But this allegation, these allegations, in my opinion as a former prosecutor, are much more serious than what we see in the indictments against James and Comey. It’s like they’re prosecuting someone and trying to find some crime, no matter how small. These are things that definitely warranted investigation while I was at Homeland Security.

There may be explanations, it is true, that we do not know, but based on the face of the indictment, these are completely different charges.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, Mary McCord, thank you, as always, for your time and insight. We appreciate that.