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John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has arrived in federal court to surrender to authorities on charges of mishandling classified information.
The 18 charges stem from allegations that he shared or stored sensitive material, including some designated top secret.
Bolton was in Trump’s first administration, but had a contentious split with the White House and became one of the president’s most vocal public critics.
The indictment makes Bolton, 76, the third political opponent of the US president to face charges in recent weeks. Bolton said he would defend his “lawful conduct”.
On Friday, Bolton did not answer pointed questions from reporters when he entered a courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, to surrender to authorities.
He is expected to make an initial appearance before a judge and may have to stop at the US Marshals office for “possible” fingerprinting and a booking photo, CBS News, the BBC’s US affiliate, reported.
Prosecutors accused Bolton of using private messaging apps and email to illegally transmit sensitive information.
“These documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries and foreign policy relations,” prosecutors wrote.
In response to the allegations, Bolton said he would defend his “lawful conduct”.
He added that he had “become the latest target for the Department of Justice to weaponize those he (Trump) considers his enemies with charges that have been dismissed before or that distort the facts.”
The indictment issued this week accuses Bolton of sharing “diary-like records” with two unnamed individuals and using his personal email account to transmit messages containing sensitive material.
The indictment also states that between 2019 and 2021, Bolton was allegedly hacked by a “cyber actor believed to be linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran” who accessed his account, exposing the classified material.
“Like many government officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton has kept diaries — that is not a crime,” Bolton’s attorney, Abe Lowell, said in response to the allegations.
Lowell described the records in question as “unclassified, shared only with his immediate family and known to the FBI as recently as 2021.”
An indictment in the US court system is a formal charge issued by a grand jury—a group of members of the public created by a prosecutor to review the evidence to determine whether the case should proceed.
Bolton has been under scrutiny for his handling of classified information since 2020, when he tried to publish a book about his time in the first Trump administration.
The Justice Department tried to block the book’s release, claiming it might contain classified information.
A federal judge ruled against the government, but chided Bolton in his decision, writing that he had “taken a gamble with the national security of the United States.”
The investigation into Bolton continued into the Joe Biden administration but did not lead to charges.
The FBI searched Bolton’s home and office in August, signaling an active investigation.
Trump has frequently attacked Bolton on social media and criticized him in public statements.
In 2020, when Bolton published his book The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, the president said he “illegally released a lot of classified information” in the book and called his former adviser a “scumbag who should be in jail.”
Upon his return to office, Trump revoked Bolton’s security clearance this year, along with protections for several other political opponents.
The charge against Bolton 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.
