Washington —John Bolton, who served as national security adviser to President Trump in his first term, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified information shared with two relatives in “diary-like entries” across a seven-year span.
Bolton appeared at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was expected to be processed in the criminal case. He made an initial appearance before a magistrate judge after a federal grand jury handed up an 18-count indictment against him Thursday. Bolton was released on his own recognizance, promising to appear in court as required and surrender to serve any sentence that may be imposed.
He was required to turn over his passport and is restricted from traveling outside the continental U.S. without permission from the court, according to an order setting the conditions of his release. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, appointed to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama, will oversee the criminal case against Bolton.
Bolton, who has held a variety of senior positions within the U.S. government since the 1980s, is the third prominent critic of Mr. Trump’s to face criminal charges in recent weeks. Grand juries in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted former FBI Director James Comey late last month for allegedly lying to Congress, and New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged bank fraud. Comey pleaded not guilty to the two charges brought against him, and James has called the claims against her “baseless.”
Prosecutors allege that from 2018 to August 2025, Bolton shared with two unnamed relatives more than 1,000 pages of information about his day-to-day activities while serving as national security adviser to Mr. Trump, some of which was classified. The indictment also claims that Bolton kept documents, writings and notes related to the national defense, including information that was classified, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Bolton faces eight counts of transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of retaining national defense information.
In a statement following the indictment, Bolton said Mr. Trump has been working to punish him since he left his post as national security adviser in 2019, during the president’s first term in the White House.
“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said.
He said the charges brought against him “are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.”
Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s lawyer, denied that his client committed wrongdoing.
“These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Lowell said in a statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime.”
Prosecutors allege that Bolton’s “diary-like” notes were typed transcriptions of handwritten notes that were then sent to two unnamed relatives through a commercial non-governmental messaging app. They said Bolton also used personal email accounts, like those from AOL and Google, to email classified information to the relatives at their own accounts.
The indictment alleges that the entries included sensitive information up to the top secret and sensitive compartmented information level, a designation that means it was derived from sensitive intelligence sources. The notes contained “detailed information that Bolton learned from meetings with senior members of the U.S. Government, intelligence briefings from members of the intelligence community and military, discussions with foreign leaders and foreign intelligence and military organizations, and intelligence products and reports,” according to the document.
Bolton is also accused of printing out and storing the notes at his Maryland home and keeping digital copies on personal devices. The FBI conducted a search of Bolton’s house and Washington, D.C., office in August and seized electronic files showing the diary entries had been transmitted to the two relatives, according to the indictment. Investigators also found hard-copy printed versions of Bolton’s diary entries during the search, it said.
Prosecutors said that at some point between 2019 and 2021, after he left the White House, Bolton’s email account was hacked by a “cyber actor,” believed to associated with Iran, which gained “unauthorized access ” to the classified and national defense information housed within the account.
A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in July 2021, but didn’t disclose that it contained sensitive information, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said that Bolton received an email around July 2021 that read: “I do not think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content of John’s email (some of which have been attached), especially after the recent acquittal. This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side! Contact me before it’s too late …”
The FBI was informed of the message.
The indictment against Bolton includes much more detail than those involving Comey and James, and the charges were brought by a different U.S. attorney’s office than the one pursuing those other two cases. Still, Bolton — like Comey and James — has been frequent target of Mr. Trump since he left this post as national security adviser.
Soon after the president returned to the White House for a second term, Mr. Trump ended Bolton’s U.S. Secret Service protection. Bolton had been granted protection by the Biden administration in 2021 following a series of threats from Iran related to the 2020 killing of General Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike.
Mr. Trump told reporters Thursday after Bolton was indicted that he’s a “bad guy.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
