18 charges stem from allegations he shared or retained sensitive materials,<\/a> including some characterised as top secret.<\/p>\nBolton served during Trump’s first administration but parted with the White House contentiously, and has become one of the president’s most vocal public critics.<\/p>\n
The indictment makes Bolton, 76, the third of the US president’s political opponents to face charges in recent weeks. Bolton has said he would defend his “lawful conduct”.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Bolton did not respond to shouted questions from reporters as he entered the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, to surrender to authorities.<\/p>\n
He is expected to make an initial appearance before a judge and may have to stop at US Marshals office for “possible” fingerprinting and booking photo, CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the US, reported.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have accused Bolton of using personal messaging apps and email to illegally transmit sensitive information.<\/p>\n
“These documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations,” prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n
Responding to the charges, Bolton said he would defend his “lawful conduct”.<\/p>\n
He added he had “become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he [Trump] deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.”<\/p>\n
The indictment issued this week accused Bolton of sharing “diary-like entries” with two unnamed individuals, and using his personal email account to transmit messages with sensitive materials.<\/p>\n
The indictment also states that between 2019 and 2021, Bolton was allegedly the target of a hacking attack from a “cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran” gained access to his account, exposing the classified materials.<\/p>\n
“Like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries \u2013 that is not a crime,” Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in response to the charges.<\/p>\n
Lowell described the records in question as “unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021”.<\/p>\n
An indictment in the US justice system is a formal accusation issued by a grand jury – a group of members of the public set up by a prosecutor to review evidence to determine if a case should proceed.<\/p>\n
Bolton has been scrutinised for his handling of classified information since 2020, when he sought to publish a book about his time in the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department tried to block the book’s release, alleging it could contain classified information. <\/p>\n
A federal judge ruled against the government, but rebuked Bolton in his decision, writing he had “gambled with the national security of the United States”.<\/p>\n
An investigation into Bolton continued into the Joe Biden administration, but did not lead to charges.<\/p>\n
The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Bolton’s house and office in August, signalling an active investigation.<\/p>\n
Trump has frequently attacked Bolton in social media and criticised him in public statements. <\/p>\n
In 2020, when Bolton published his book, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, the president said he “illegally released much Classified Information” in the book and called his former adviser a “lowlife who should be in jail.”<\/p>\n
Upon retuning to office, Trump revoked Bolton’s security detail this year, along with protection for several other political opponents.<\/p>\n
Bolton’s indictment comes after Trump’s Justice Department brought criminal charges against two of his political opponents: former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has arrived at a federal court to surrender to authorities…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-220008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}