GREENBELT, Maryland, Oct 16 (Reuters) – John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, was charged on Thursday in a sweeping indictment that accuses him of sharing sensitive government information with two of his relatives for possible use in a book he was writing.
The indictment marked the third time in recent weeks the Justice Department has secured criminal charges against one of Trump’s critics.
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The indictment says the notes Bolton shared with his two relatives in electronic messages included information he gleaned from meetings with senior government officials, discussions with foreign leaders, and intelligence briefings.
In some of the chats, Bolton and his relatives – whom the indictment does not identify – discussed using some of the material for a book. Bolton referred to the two people with whom he shared his daily notes as his “editors,” the indictment said.
“Talking with [book publisher] because they have a right of first refusal!” Bolton wrote in one message, according to the indictment.
The two relatives referred to in the indictment are Bolton’s wife and daughter, two people familiar with the matter said.
In a statement, Bolton said, “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.”
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information.
Trump, a Republican who campaigned for the presidency on a vow of retribution after facing a slew of legal woes once his first term in the White House ended in 2021, has dispensed with decades-long norms designed to insulate federal law enforcement from political pressures.
In recent months, he has actively pushed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department to bring charges against his perceived adversaries including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, even driving out a prosecutor he deemed to be moving too slowly in doing so.
The investigation of Bolton was opened in 2022, predating the Trump administration. Inside the Justice Department, the case is viewed as stronger than the prosecutions of Comey and James, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The indictment of Bolton, filed in federal court in Maryland, charges him with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information, all in violation of the Espionage Act.
No court appearance date was listed for Bolton as of Thursday evening.
Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison if Bolton is convicted, but any sentence would be determined by a judge based on a range of factors.
Asked by reporters at the White House about the Bolton indictment on Thursday, Trump said: “He’s a bad guy.”
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton speaks at the John F. Kennedy Jr Forum at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., September 29, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
BOLTON’S EMAIL ALLEGEDLY HACKED
Bolton served as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term before emerging as one of the president’s most vocal critics. Bolton, also a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described Trump as unfit to be president in a memoir he released last year.
In the indictment, prosecutors said Bolton shared more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as national security adviser, including top-secret information, with the two unauthorized people from April 2018 to August 2025.
The indictment said a “cyber actor” tied to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s personal email after he left government service and accessed classified information. Prosecutors said a representative for Bolton told the government about the hack but did not report that he stored classified information in the email account.
Trump himself was previously indicted on Espionage Act violations for allegedly transporting classified records to his Florida home after departing the White House in 2021 and refusing repeated requests by the government to return them. Trump had pleaded not guilty and that case was dropped after he won reelection in November 2024.
OTHER TRUMP FOES CHARGED
The Justice Department has already indicted Comey, who investigated Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and James, who previously brought a civil fraud case against Trump and his family real estate company.
Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017, is facing charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction of Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
James is facing charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. She has denied wrongdoing and is slated to appear in federal court later this month.
In those two cases, the indictments were secured solely by Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist who was appointed U.S. Attorney after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, was ousted due to a lack of evidence.
The indictment of Bolton was signed by Maryland U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes, who has been a federal prosecutor since 2013 and has held multiple leadership roles. The indictment also bore the names of several career prosecutors, including Thomas Sullivan, who leads the Maryland office’s national security division.
Nevertheless, the Justice Department still runs the risk of being viewed as unfairly selective in its decision to prosecute Bolton for Espionage Act violations.
Earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drew scrutiny for sharing details about the imminent attack against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a Signal message group that included his wife, brother, personal lawyer, as well as a journalist from the Atlantic magazine.
Legal experts suggested that sharing these sensitive details of the Yemen attack appeared to violate the Espionage Act, but the case was quickly closed and the Justice Department took no apparent steps to criminally investigate the incident.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Jack Queen in New York; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Trevor Hunnicut in Washington; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis
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Sarah N. Lynch is the lead reporter for Reuters covering the U.S. Justice Department out of Washington, D.C. During her time on the beat, she has covered everything from the Mueller report and the use of federal agents to quell protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in prisons and the department’s prosecutions following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Jack Queen covers major lawsuits against the Trump administration involving urgent questions of executive power and how their resolution could affect the law and the legal profession in the years to come. Previously, he covered criminal and civil cases against Trump during the interim of his presidential terms, including gavel-to-gavel coverage of his historic hush money trial in New York and his civil fraud trial, which ended in a half-billion-dollar judgment. Jack has also covered high-profile defamation cases including the Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News, which settled for $787 million after intense pretrial litigation. Based in New York, he specializes in breaking news as well as analysis, explainers and other explanatory reporting.
