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john bolton
Indictment of Ex-Trump Adviser John Bolton Called a 'Warning Shot to Every American'
The indictment has been condemned as part of the president's crackdown on his "enemies list," but some legal experts are also highlighting how the case differs from those of Letitia James and James Comey.
Oct 17, 2025
While critics of John Bolton have long called for him to be tried at the International Criminal Court, the federal indictment of President Donald Trump's ex-national security adviser on Thursday is generating widespread alarm.
Bolton surrendered at a courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland Friday morning after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with violating the Espionage Act—specifically 18 counts of unlawfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.
When former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey was indicted last month, Trump pledged that "there'll be others." Then Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James—who successfully prosecuted the president for financial crimes—was indicted last week. Critics accuse Trump of weaponizing the US Department of Justice (DOJ) against his enemies.
Some of the reactions to Bolton's indictment were similar, including from the 76-year-old himself, who served in not only Trump's first term but also the Reagan and both Bush administrations. He said in a lengthy statement that "Donald Trump's retribution" against him began when he resigned from the president's first administration and began publicly criticizing him.
"Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts," Bolton said. "These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive efforts to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct."
"Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America's constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom," added Bolton, a longtime advocate of regime change in other countries. "I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power."
Bolton's lawyer is Abbe Lowell, who is also representing James and Lisa Cook, whom Trump is trying to oust from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. His former clients include the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Lowell said that "like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries—that is not a crime."
Co-chairs of the Not Above the Law coalition—Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Brett Edkins of Stand Up America—connected Bolton to James and Comey in a Friday statement:
Three indictments in three weeks. Three Trump critics. Three prosecutions designed to intimidate anyone who dares challenge this president. Three people who were on Trump's "enemies list." The pattern is undeniable: Speak out against Trump, become a target of the DOJ.
The message from this administration couldn't be clearer: Loyalty gets rewarded, dissent gets investigated. While Trump's handpicked prosecutors work overtime delivering indictments against his critics, actual threats to American safety go unaddressed.
A Department of Justice that acts in service of presidential revenge rather than public safety threatens democracy itself. This isn't just about Bolton—it's a warning shot to every American that dissent now comes with the threat of prosecution.
Congress has a constitutional duty to intervene, restore DOJ independence, and end this dangerous abuse of law enforcement before more lives are destroyed for political purposes.
However, University of Alabama law professor and former US attorney Joyce Vance argued on Substack Friday that the Bolton indictment "is entirely different" from those against Comey and James in the Eastern District of Virginia, pointing out that "the US attorney in Maryland is a career prosecutor. But she didn't go into the grand jury to obtain the indictment. It's signed off on by two senior prosecutors in her office as well as lawyers from DOJ's National Security Division."
"Instead of the factually deficient indictments we've seen in the other cases, this is the sort of detailed indictment we are used to seeing in a serious matter," she highlighted. "There is undoubtedly truth to the allegation that Donald Trump wanted Bolton prosecuted. But the intervening layer of professional prosecutors here, people who assessed the case and the evidence and decided there was enough to move forward, may make it difficult to win a selective prosecution argument."
"In the Comey and James cases, experienced prosecutors declined to bring the cases, and the US attorney sacrificed his job for principle. The cases were only brought because Trump dropped in a loyalist to replace him," Vance added. "Here, unless Bolton has some evidence that these prosecutors did not proceed professionally, he may not have a winnable legal argument."
CNN's Aaron Blake published a similar analysis early Friday. Blake also noted that in 2020, US District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, "ruled in Bolton's favor in a civil case stemming from a dispute with the Trump administration over the publication of Bolton's book. But Lamberth otherwise excoriated Bolton for his handling of classified information."
Meanwhile, Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, used Bolton's indictment to call for broader reforms on Friday. He began by noting that "John Bolton is an unrepentant war criminal and one of most odious national security hawks in Washington. As part of his antipathy for press freedom, whistleblowers, and anyone who challenges the national security state, he called for both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden to be executed for exposing abuses of power by our government."
"Similarly, he called for journalist Julian Assange to get 'at least 176 years in jail' for publishing truthful information about US war crimes," Gibbons explained. "Now, Bolton, like Manning, Snowden, and Assange has been indicted under the Espionage Act."
"We at Defending Rights & Dissent were one of the leading voices in Washington in support of Manning, Snowden, and Assange. And we remain the leading voice on reforming the Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to prosecute courageous whistleblowers and journalists," he said. "As part of our reform proposal, we advocated the Espionage Act be amended to require the government to prove a defendant intended to harm the national security of the US."
"Nothing in the indictment of Bolton indicates the government believes Bolton had that level of intent," Gibbons stressed. "As a result, we do not believe Bolton should be indicted under the Espionage Act. This is the same position we took regarding Donald Trump, who himself has been responsible for abusing the Espionage Act to silence journalists and whistleblowers."
"The Espionage Act is an overly broad, archaic law. As a result, it is ripe for selective, politically motivated enforcement. It is for these reasons that Bolton championed it as a tool for political persecutions against whistleblowers and journalists. And it is for this reason the Trump administration has chosen it as a tool for their petty retaliation against a national security hawk who shares much of their views on the use of the Espionage Act," he concluded. "Enough is enough. It is well past time to reform the Espionage Act once and for all."
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A Timeline of Trump’s Futile Epstein Diversions
For months, US President Trump has tried to divert public attention from the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell files. But he can’t shake the story, and it keeps getting worse.
Aug 27, 2025
Drip, drip, drip…
For months, US President Trump has tried to divert public attention from the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell files. But he can’t shake the story, and it keeps getting worse.
The Reversal
Trump campaigned for the presidency on the promise to release all of the files relating to Epstein’s sex trafficking in minors. To supercharge his MAGA base, he fueled conspiracy theories that the files contained something sinister involving prominent Democrats.
February 2025: Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, told a Fox News interviewer that Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk, awaiting her review before its release.
May: Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche informed Trump that his name appeared in the Epstein files, the New York Times later reported.
July 7: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel—who had also pushed conspiracy theories about the files during Trump’s campaign—issued a two-page memo stating that there was no Epstein client list and that the Justice Department (DOJ) would not release any additional materials relating to the matter.
July 16: Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey was fired. Comey was a lead prosecutor in the investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his coconspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. She was also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey and chief of the Violent and Organized Crime Unit. The memo gave no reason for Comey’s abrupt termination.
July 17: The Wall Street Journal published Trump’s alleged birthday note to Epstein that included his sketch of a naked woman.
The Blowback
Trump’s MAGA base erupted in anger over his refusal to release the DOJ’s Epstein files. Trying to appease his followers, Trump directed Bondi to ask that the courts release the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury transcripts. It was disingenuous because: 1) the courts were not likely to release the material; and 2) even if they did, the transcripts would constitute a small fraction of the Justice Department’s Epstein-Maxwell files.
July 23: A Florida judge denied Bondi’s motion to release the files relating to the Justice Department’s Epstein investigations in 2005 and 2007 that had resulted in a non-prosecution agreement. Trump’s then-Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta had negotiated the agreement with Epstein’s high-powered lawyers while serving as US attorney for the Southern District of Florida during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The Blunder
July 24: Deputy Attorney General (and Trump’s former personal attorney) Todd Blanche flew to Tallahassee and met with Maxwell for two days—an unprecedented visit for a No. 2 official in the Justice Department. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
July 31: Contrary to prison assignment policies for sex offenders, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell from a Tallahassee prison to a “Club Fed” camp in Texas.
The Boomerang
August 11: A federal judge in New York denied Bondi’s motion to unseal Maxwell’s grand jury files. The court observed that anyone “who reviewed these materials expecting, based on the Government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled. There is no ‘there’ there.”
The entire exercise was a farce—another Trump con job:
The one colorable argument under that doctrine for unsealing in this case, in fact, is that doing so would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal. A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at “transparency” but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.
August 20: A different federal judge in New York blasted Bondi’s motion to unseal the Epstein grand jury transcripts. Describing the “trove” of materials that the Justice Department had assembled but withheld from the public, the court observed:
The Government’s 100,000 pages of Epstein files and materials dwarf the 70 odd pages of Epstein grand jury materials.
Trump’s directive that Bondi seek the release of the grand jury materials was always a ruse. As the court continued:
The Government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files. By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a “diversion” from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.
The court specifically called out Trump’s about-face on releasing the files:
In February 2025, the Government, as noted, was prepared to release the “Epstein Files” to the public. See DOJ Press Release. But then, on July 6, 2025, the Government announced that it would not make the files available to the public.
And the judge concluded: “The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice.”
The Newest Scam
Meanwhile, on August 5, several Republicans voted with Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to force chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to subpoena the Justice Department for the Epstein-Maxwell materials. Comer also issued deposition subpoenas to former Attorneys General William Barr, Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, and Alberto Gonzales; former FBI Director James Comey; former special counsel and FBI Director Robert Mueller III; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and former President Bill Clinton.
That’s superficially impressive, but purely performative. Notably missing from the committee’s witness list are the frontline prosecutors and investigators who actually know something meaningful about the Epstein-Maxwell cases.
One is Maurene Comey.
August 22: The FBI’s surprise search of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s home and office dominated the media. Coincidentally, the Justice Department also released a transcript of Blanche’s July interview with Maxwell during which she asserted that no one connected with Epstein’s alleged crimes had done anything wrong—including her and, of course, Trump, upon whom she lavished praise.
Sharing the news cycle was the Justice Department’s production of documents to the House Oversight Committee. It provided a fraction of the DOJ’s Epstein file, and only 3% was new.
August 25: The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed materials from Epstein’s estate and announced that it will depose Alex Acosta on September 19.
Drip, drip, drip…
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FBI Raids John Bolton's Home in Apparent Act of 'Political Retribution' for Trump Criticism
"The government's being weaponized to silence opposition," said one commentator, "and it's only going to get worse."
Aug 22, 2025
The FBI's raid on former national security adviser John Bolton's home in suburban Maryland on Friday morning followed his mounting criticism of President Donald Trump's handling of negotiations on Russia's war with Ukraine, leading several observers to warn that the raid displayed the president's desire for "retribution" against his perceived political enemies.
CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene reported the FBI's "court-authorized" search of Bolton's home in Bethesda stemmed from the U.S. Department of Justice's "now-resumed investigation into whether he disclosed classified information in his 2020 book," which recounted his time serving as Trump's national security adviser during his first term.
A senior federal law enforcement official also told The New York Times that authorities are investigating allegations that Bolton—a right-wing hawk reviled by human rights defenders for his history of war-mongering both inside and outside of government positions under Republicans administrations, including Trump's—leaked national security information to the media to damage Trump over the past few years, as well as accusations regarding Bolton's book.
Trump and Bolton clashed over foreign policy during the president's first term, with Trump denouncing the former George W. Bush administration official—a key propagandist in the lead-up to the Iraq War and an advocate for violent regime change in numerous countries—as "a hawk" who pushed incessantly for military action against Iran.
In June, Trump bombed three nuclear sites in Iran.
Bolton's push for military action against countries including Venezuela and Iraq, his support for Israel's violent apartheid policies, and his boasting of having "helped plan coups d'etat" in other countries have led anti-war groups and progressive critics to accuse the former national security official of war crimes. Many observers on Friday noted that their alarm over the FBI raid was unrelated to their views on Bolton himself.
"The rule of law is under attack," said constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis of Georgia State University. "We have to zealously defend anyone—even ideologically despised folks—from arbitrary government [attacks]."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) added that while he has "nothing in common politically" with Bolton, the raid appeared to be "just another step in Trump's march toward authoritarianism."
"Last time I heard, in America, people are allowed to criticize the President of the United States without the FBI showing up on their doorstep," said the senator.
The raid was reportedly ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, who accused Bolton of being a member of "the Executive Branch Deep State" in a book he wrote in 2023.
Pate posted a public message on X Friday morning saying his agency was "on [a] mission," just as news broke about the FBI raid.
"NO ONE is above the law," he added.
The post exemplified how Patel has "shattered norms intended to minimize public comment suggesting animus toward subjects under investigation," reported the Times.
In recent days, Bolton has accused Trump of failing to impose the "severe consequences" he threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with if he continued attacking Ukraine, and said Putin "clearly won" the negotiations he had with Trump last week—coming away from them without facing sanctions or requirements for a ceasefire.
Democratic political strategist Mike Nellis said that while he has "no love for John Bolton... the FBI is raiding him for criticizing Trump’s foreign policy."
"The government's being weaponized to silence opposition," said Nellis, "and it's only going to get worse."
In an appearence on CNN, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) suggested the raid was strategically timed to turn the public's attention away from files regarding the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which were sent to the House Oversight Committee on Friday under a subpoena. Trump was a known associate of Epstein. As Bloomberg News reported earlier this month, FBI officials redacted Trump's name and the names of other prominent public figures in files regarding Epstein.
Krishnamoorthi on the FBI raiding Bolton's house: "It looks like it's also an attempt to distract from the other big news of the day, which is the first production of the Epstein files that is required by subpoena from the Oversight Committee and they want to change the conversation."
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 22, 2025 at 9:15 AM
"There's a tremendous clamor for these documents and transparency as to these files," said Krishnamoorthi, "and as you know both Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, are trying to prevent that from happening, and they want to change the conversation."
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