DOJ indicts John Bolton over classified files

If Bolton had 'praised' Trump, it's 'safe to say he wouldn't have been indicted'

(Image credit: Jason Bergman / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 17 October 2025

What happened

Federal prosecutors in Maryland Thursday charged John Bolton, the longtime Republican national security official who worked for and then became a critic of President Donald Trump, with mishandling classified information. The 18-count indictment alleges that Bolton emailed more than 1,000 pages of “diary-like entries” to his wife and daughter while working as Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and 2019.

Who said what

The prosecution of Bolton, the third Trump “adversary” charged in the last month, will “unfold against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department is pursuing the president’s political enemies while at the same time sparing his allies from scrutiny,” The Associated Press said. But this indictment is “significantly more detailed in its allegations than earlier cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.”

Bolton “insists on his innocence,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. But “even if the case was as strong as the 26-page indictment suggests,” Trump’s conduct “inevitably casts a cloud over the charges.” There is “little doubt that the underlying motivation for this prosecution is retribution,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. If Bolton had “praised” Trump, “it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have been indicted.”

What next?

Bolton was expected to make an initial court appearance today. Meanwhile, Trump’s “unprecedented effort to pressure the Justice Department into prosecuting his perceived enemies” continues apace, the Post said, with prosecutors “pursuing investigations into a sitting U.S. senator, former top leaders of the FBI and CIA and the Georgia prosecutor who charged Trump in a massive 2020 election conspiracy case.”

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.