Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said Thursday that the 18-count grand jury indictment against him for allegedly mishandling classified documents is evidence that he is being targeted by a politicized and weaponized Justice Department.
Bolton faces 18 felony charges, including 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information stemming from his tenure as White House national security adviser during President Trump’s first term. He is also charged with eight counts of transmitting national defense information.
Bolton appeared at a Maryland courthouse on Friday, where he was expected to surrender and enter a plea of not guilty, Just the News reported.
“I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those [Trump] deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement.
In 2020, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against Bolton over his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” alleging he violated his contract by publishing the book without completing a required pre-publication review for classified material.
The department later opened a criminal investigation to determine whether Bolton had revealed classified information in the memoir.
The Biden DOJ closed that investigation in 2021. “This is a complete vindication,” Bolton told Axios at the time. “They’re just giving up.”
The federal judge who oversaw the case allowed Bolton to move forward with publishing his book, but ruled that he “likely published classified materials” and “exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.”
Bolton, in response to the grand jury indictment, also mentioned the Trump administration’s previous attempts to block the publication of the book. He said the book was “reviewed and approved by the appropriate, experienced career clearance officials.”
According to the indictment, a representative for Bolton informed the FBI in July 2021 that one of his personal accounts had allegedly been hacked by Iran. However, the representative did not indicate that the hackers had accessed classified information or that Bolton had shared any government secrets through the account.
Bolton said the FBI was “made fully aware” of the hack, noting that “in four years of the prior administration, after these reviews, no charges were ever filed.”
“These charges are not just about [Trump’s] focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct,” Bolton said. “Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom.
“I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power,” he added.
According to the indictment, Bolton faces eight counts of transmitting National Defense Information and ten counts of unlawfully retaining National Defense Information.
“From on or about April 9, 2018, through at least on or about August 22, 2025, BOLTON abused his position as National Security Advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor—including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level—with two unauthorized individuals, namely Individuals 1 and 2,” the indictment reads.
“BOLTON also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland,” it adds.
The documents Bolton allegedly transmitted were sent to two individuals unauthorized to view classified information, according to the DOJ.
The documents Bolton allegedly retained contained highly sensitive national security information, according to the indictment, per Fox News. One document detailed intelligence about a planned attack by a hostile group abroad, while another described intelligence shared by foreign partners with the U.S. intelligence community.
Additional materials reportedly included information on an adversary’s planned missile launch, a covert U.S. operation in a foreign country, and the methods used to gather human intelligence, said Fox.