A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted former national security adviser John Bolton, a senior Justice Department official said, making him the third critic of President Donald Trump to face criminal charges in recent weeks.
Bolton was indicted in federal court in Maryland, where he lives and where prosecutors have been investigating whether he improperly withheld classified materials after his acrimonious departure from the first Trump administration.
When asked about the impeachment during an event at the White House on Thursday, Trump said, “I didn’t know it,” but he is “a bad person.”
“I think he’s a bad guy, yes, he’s a bad guy. Too bad, but that’s the way it is,” Trump said.
The other two prominent Trump adversaries who will face charges in recent weeks are former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has maintained that the former diplomat had handled the records properly.
The FBI conducted searches at Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington, D.C., office in August. Redacted search warrant applications showed that law enforcement cited Bolton’s “2020 Pre-Publication Book Review” and the “Hacking of Bolton’s AOL account by a foreign entity” as grounds for probable cause to search his residence and office.
The name of the foreign entity remains unclear as the section was redacted in documents that were made public. The book referenced in the search warrant was Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened,” which chronicles his tumultuous time as Trump’s national security adviser.
The 2020 book became problematic for Trump even before its publication during his first impeachment trial.
The case involved allegations that the president withheld military aid from Ukraine to force it to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Bolton said in the book that Trump had explicitly told him that was why he was withholding aid, something Trump denied.
Trump was acquitted in his Senate trial and called for Bolton to be prosecuted after the publication of his book.
“He published massive amounts of classified and confidential information, but classified. That’s illegal and you go to jail for it,” Trump told Fox News in an interview at the time.
Bolton denied that the book included classified information.
Court documents related to the search warrant show that the FBI had been investigating Bolton for years. Agents had interviewed him eight times between October 2020 and June 2025 at his office, according to the application.
An inventory of items investigators took from Bolton’s office included several documents described as “classified,” “confidential” or “secret.” Some were described as “Classified Documents on Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “US Government Strategic Communications Plan – Confidential Documents.”
The charges brought against Bolton, Comey and James largely mirror charges and claims brought against Trump between his first and second terms.
Trump was indicted in June 2023 for withholding and mishandling classified documents from his time in the White House. He pleaded not guilty and the case was dismissed on technical grounds by a judge appointed by Trump in 2024.
Two of the other charges against Trump in the documents case were false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The two charges against Comey are false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, James was charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment alleges that she falsely claimed that a house in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second home, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms to which she was not entitled. The supposed plan saved him about $50 a month.
James’ office sued Trump and his company in 2022, alleging that they were submitting misleading financial statements to banks and insurers, overstating and understating his assets when it was for their financial benefit, and overstating his net worth to the tune of billions of dollars.
The scheme allowed Trump and his company to obtain bank loans and insurance policies at rates to which they were not entitled and, as a result, “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains,” James’ office said.
The case resulted in a $464 million civil judgment against Trump last year. A divided state appeals court upheld the fraud finding in August but dismissed the financial penalty entirely, calling it “excessive.”
Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case.
James has called the charges against him “baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
The charges against Comey and James came after a Sept. 20 post on Truth Social by Trump urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against the two, as well as Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
“Everyone is very guilty, but nothing will be done,” the post said. “We can’t delay any longer.”
An administration official told NBC News that the public post was to be sent to Bondi as a direct message.
