Bolton indictment: Retribution or justice?

John Bolton leaves his home after being indicted — “The lesson is that if you work for the president, he then sours on you, and you criticize him, you are not safe.” (Image credit: Alex Kent / Getty Images)

President Trump can “add another check mark to his enemies list,” said Steve Benen in MSNBC.com. John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser turned Trump critic, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of mishandling classified information. Coming on the heels of charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Bolton case can be seen as another example of the Justice Department “being weaponized” against a Trump foe. Still, there’s “a qualitative difference” between those indictments and Bolton’s, namely that his contains “credible evidence of alleged wrongdoing.” Prosecutors said that as a Trump adviser in 2018 and ’19, Bolton used his personal email to share “diary” notes containing classified information with his wife and daughter. None of that classified material appeared in Bolton’s 2020 memoir, an unflattering portrait of Trump’s chaotic first administration. But it was apparently read by Iranian hackers. Bolton, who alerted the FBI to the hack, denies any wrongdoing and has called the charges part of Trump’s “effort to intimidate his opponents.”

The prosecution’s case looks strong, “but the president’s conduct inevitably casts a cloud over the charges,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. Trump has never forgiven Bolton for publishing his salacious tell-all memoir or for calling him “unfit to be president.” So it wouldn’t be surprising if Trump personally ordered the prosecution of a man he once called a “traitor” and a “low-life who should be in jail.” Bolton is undeniably a victim of “lawfare,” said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. Under a previous administration, it’s likely his case would not have been charged— as happened with Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden when they were accused of mishandling classified information. But “lawfare and real misconduct are not mutually exclusive,” and if the allegations in the indictment are found to be true, Bolton, 76, could face years in prison.

Everyone in Trump world should take Bolton’s indictment as a warning, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. While Comey and James investigated and prosecuted Trump, it was Trump who hired Bolton to work for him, before casting “him aside over policy disagreements.” Since then, Trump has stripped Bolton of his security detail—despite threats against his life from Iran—and his DOJ has raided Bolton’s house and charged him. “The lesson is that if you work for the president, he then sours on you, and you criticize him, you are not safe.”