A federal grand jury indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Thursday on 18 criminal charges related to the mishandling of classified information.
Bolton, 76, was charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information. The indictment was returned by a grand jury in Maryland, where Bolton lives in Bethesda.
“There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
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 said.
The two individuals referred to in the indictment are Bolton’s wife and daughter, neither of whom held security clearances. Bolton allegedly transmitted the classified information using personal email accounts hosted by AOL and Google, as well as messaging applications according to numerous reports.
“The FBI’s investigation revealed that John Bolton allegedly transmitted top secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house in direct violation of federal law,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. “The case was based on meticulous work from dedicated career professionals at the FBI who followed the facts without fear or favor.”
The indictment said Bolton illegally transmitted information that revealed intelligence about future attacks by adversarial groups, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations. The documents also included intelligence on an adversary’s leaders and information revealing sources and collections used to obtain statements on foreign adversaries.
The indictment also reveals that sometime after Bolton left the White House in 2019, “a cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran hacked BOLTON’s personal email account and gained unauthorized access to the classified and national defense information in that account.”
Bolton’s representative told the FBI about the hack but did not reveal he had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers now had access to government secrets, prosecutors say.
FBI agents raided Bolton’s home in August, seizing two iPhones, three computers, one Seagate hard drive, two USB drives, a white binder labeled “Statements and Reflections to Allied Strikes,” typed documents in folders labeled “Trump I-IV,” and four boxes containing what federal officials called “printed daily activities.”
A source familiar with the investigation told Fox News that CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided Patel with limited access to U.S. intelligence that served as the basis for the search warrant.
“I can’t give you any more details than that, but let’s just say that John Bolton really had some nerve to attack Trump over his handling of classified information,” the source said.
Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 before being fired. He later published a tell-all memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” that was highly critical of Trump’s presidency. The Trump administration attempted to block the book’s publication, which they said contained classified information. A federal judge declined to stop the book but ruled Bolton had likely compromised national security.
President Donald Trump first responded to the indictment during a press conference —
🚨 BREAKING: "John Bolton was just indicted by a grand jury. Do you have a reaction to that?"
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "I didn't know that. You're telling me for the first time! I think he's a bad person. Too bad."
"That's the WAY IT GOES, RIGHT?" 😂
"He's a BAD person." 🔥 pic.twitter.com/QDH4TPFttA
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 16, 2025
Bolton issued a lengthy statement Thursday denying wrongdoing and calling the indictment politically motivated.
“Donald Trump’s retribution against me began then [during Trump’s first administration], continued when he tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of my book, The Room Where It Happened, before the 2020 election, and became one of his rallying cries in his re-election campaign,” Bolton said. “Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.”
“These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Bolton’s lawyer said.
The investigation into Bolton began in 2022 after his emails were hacked by Iran, during the Biden administration. The Biden Justice Department had dropped a previous investigation into Bolton’s book in 2021.
If convicted, Bolton faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each count. Bolton is expected to surrender to authorities Friday and make his first court appearance.
Bolton joins former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James as Trump critics recently indicted by federal prosecutors.