{"id":219433,"date":"2025-10-17T05:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/219433\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T05:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:13:08","slug":"what-has-john-bolton-former-trump-adviser-been-charged-with-and-what-happens-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/219433\/","title":{"rendered":"What has John Bolton, former Trump adviser, been charged with and what happens now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has been charged with storing top secret records at home.<\/p>\n

He also has been charged over allegedly sharing with relatives diary-like notes about his time in government containing classified information.<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton’s attorney said his client, who was indicted in a federal court in Maryland<\/a>, had done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

Here is what you need to know.<\/p>\n

Who is John Bolton?<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton is a veteran US diplomat and commentator who has been a fierce critic of his former boss<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n

His career in Republican politics stretches back to the Ronald Reagan administration.<\/p>\n

From 2005 to 2006 he served as George W Bush’s US ambassador to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton was a strong supporter of the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

In 2018 he was appointed as Mr Trump’s national security adviser, but as tensions started to simmer he left the post in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This was a man who was national security advisor to Donald Trump in President Trump’s first term \u2014 was one of his closest advisors,” the ABC’s Americas editor John Lyons told ABC News At Noon.<\/p>\n

“They worked extremely closely together, and John Bolton in that position as head of national security had access to all of America’s most secret and sensitive intelligence from the CIA and from any other sources.<\/p>\n

“[They] have now become bitter enemies.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former Trump national security adviser indicted<\/a><\/p>\n

Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has been charged with mishandling classified information.<\/p>\n

Why did Trump and Bolton fall out?<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton’s time as Mr Trump’s national security adviser was marked by disagreements with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton subsequently criticised Mr Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.<\/p>\n

The book painted a scathing picture of Mr Trump’s first administration.<\/p>\n

And in 2024, in a new foreword to the memoir, he said: “Trump is unfit to be president.”<\/p>\n

\"White<\/p>\n

John Bolton listens as US President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in 2018. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)<\/p>\n

What is Trump saying?<\/p>\n

When reporters asked Mr Trump about Mr Bolton’s indictment, the president claimed he had not known about it.<\/p>\n

“You’re telling me for the first time,” he said at the White House.<\/p>\n

“But I think he’s, you know, a bad person. I think he’s a bad guy, yeah he’s a bad guy. It’s too bad but, it’s the way it goes. That’s the way it goes, right? That’s the way it goes.”<\/p>\n

The indictment marks the third time in recent weeks the Justice Department has secured criminal charges against one of Mr Trump’s critics.<\/p>\n

What has John Bolton’s reaction been?<\/p>\n

Mr Bolton issued a statement saying he “[looked] forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his [Trump’s] abuse of power”.<\/p>\n

His lawyer Abbe Lowell said Mr Bolton had not unlawfully shared or stored any information.<\/p>\n

“Like many public officials throughout history, [Mr] Bolton kept diaries \u2014 that is not a crime,” Mr Lowell said.<\/p>\n

What happens next?<\/p>\n

The indictment was filed in federal court in Maryland.<\/p>\n

It charges Mr Bolton with eight counts of transmission of national defence information and 10 counts of retention of national defence information, all in violation of the Espionage Act.<\/p>\n

No court appearance date was listed.<\/p>\n

Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison if Mr Bolton is convicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has been charged with storing top secret records…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,2490,134,133892,133888,133889,427,5071,133891,133890],"class_list":["post-219433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-former-trump-adviser-indicted","tag-john-bolton","tag-national-security-adviser","tag-tv","tag-us-politics","tag-what-will-happen-to-john-bolton","tag-why-has-john-bolton-been-charged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}