GREENBELT, Maryland (PNN) - October 16, 2025 - John Bolton, a former national security advisor to President Donald J. Trump, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland.
Bolton, 76, is charged in a 26-page indictment with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.
Bolton, who served as President Trump’s national security advisor from April 2018 through September 2019, only to become a leading critic of him, is the third high-profile politician to be criminally charged in recent weeks after being criticized by the president.
The 26-page indictment says that Bolton, from April 2018 through this past August, shared “more than a thousand pages of his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor - including information relating to the national defense that was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI [sensitive compartmented information] level with two unauthorized individuals” who were relatives of his.
The indictment says neither of those two people had security clearances.
“Bolton also unlawfully retained documents, writings and notes relating to national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland,” the indictment said.
Bolton is accused of electronically sending, through non-governmental messaging applications, “diary-like entries” to the two other people that contained information classified as top secret.
The indictment says that at some point between September 2019 and July 2021, a cyber hacker believed to be associated with Iran “hacked Bolton’s personal email account and gained
unauthorized access to the classified and national defense information in that account, which Bolton had previously emailed to Individuals 1 and 2 while he was the National Security Advisor.”
The charges against Bolton were unsealed shortly after the indictment was handed to a magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison on each individual count if convicted, although federal sentencing guidelines would recommend a much less severe punishment.
Grand juries in Virginia recently separately indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges related to lying to Congress, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is accused of bank fraud related to a mortgage on a home she owns in Virginia.
They have denied any wrongdoing in those cases.
“There is one tier of justice for all Amerikans,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement on Bolton’s indictment. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
FBI agents on Aug. 22 raided Bolton’s Maryland home and office in Washington, D.C.
