A federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday, making him the third outspoken critic of President Donald Trump to face criminal charges in recent weeks, a senior Justice Department official confirmed.
Prosecutors allege Bolton improperly retained classified materials after his bitter split from Trump’s first administration, continuing a widening pattern of cases targeting the president’s longtime rivals.
At a White House event Thursday, Trump said he had not yet been informed of the indictment but added, “I think he’s a bad guy. Too bad, but that’s the way it goes.”
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client had “handled records appropriately” and vowed to fight the charges. The FBI raided Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington, D.C., office in August, seizing documents marked “classified,” “secret,” and “confidential,” according to search warrant filings. Some files were reportedly labeled “Weapons of Mass Destruction Classified Documents” and “U.S. Government Strategic Communications Plan.”
Court filings show federal agents interviewed Bolton eight times between 2020 and mid-2025 as part of a yearslong probe into whether he mishandled government records tied to his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. That book — which detailed Bolton’s account of Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure an investigation into Joe Biden — became central to the former president’s first impeachment.
Trump at the time accused Bolton of leaking classified material, saying in a 2020 Fox News interview that “you go to jail for that.” Bolton has repeatedly denied including any classified information in his book.
The indictment follows similar charges filed in recent weeks against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both frequent Trump antagonists.
Comey faces false statements and obstruction of Congress charges, while James has been charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The charges against all three largely mirror the 2023 classified documents indictment once brought against Trump himself — a case that was dismissed in 2024 by a Trump-appointed judge on technical grounds.
James called the accusations against her “baseless,” describing them as “political retribution at any cost.” Her indictment came weeks after Trump posted on Truth Social urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to “take action” against Comey, James, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., writing, “They’re all guilty as hell.”
An administration official told NBC News that the Truth Social message “was meant to be private.”
The charges against Bolton and other Trump critics underscore the growing concern among legal experts and opposition lawmakers that the Justice Department is being used as a political weapon against the president’s adversaries.
