The Justice Department is reportedly pushing for charges against John Bolton as soon as this week.
Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton transmitted classified emails over a private server system and they were intercepted by a hostile foreign country’s spy service, according to a recent leak to The New York Times.
John Bolton is reportedly under investigation for violating the Espionage Act.
According to CNN, prosecutors are pushing to charge John Bolton in the coming days.
CNN reported:
Senior Justice Department leaders are advocating for a charge against President Donald Trump’s former adviser-turned-critic John Bolton this week, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
Currently, the prosecutors think they could bring a stronger case by the end of the year against Bolton over the mishandling of national security documents, rather than pushing for a charge at this time.
It comes as Trump has called for the department to prosecute his political opponents, and as Justice Department prosecutors are looking at charging another adversary, former FBI Director Jim Comey.
New John Bolton documents with classified markings were released after the FBI raided his home last month.
The FBI raided John Bolton’s home last month
FBI agents were sent to Bolton’s home because he allegedly sent “highly sensitive” classified materials to family members from a private, unsecured email server while he was working at the White House during the first Trump Administration.
“Investigators reopened a dormant probe into Bolton’s alleged use of a private email to send classified national security documents to his wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in September 2019, according to a senior US official,” The New York Post reported last week.
The investigation into John Bolton began in 2020 when he used classified information to write his book titled, “The Room Where It Happened.”
The Biden Administration halted the investigation into Bolton, but FBI Director Kash Patel revived it and ordered the raid on the former NatSec Advisor’s home.
The New York Times previously reported that the US Government actually discovered John Bolton’s classified emails while gathering information from an “adversarial country’s spy service.”
On Tuesday evening, new documents released revealed that John Bolton stored classified information about WMDs and the United Nations.
“Categories of potentially classified records that the FBI reported finding at Bolton’s office included: travel memo documents with a “secret” label; confidential documents from the U.S. mission to the U.N.; confidential documents related to strategic communications; and classified documents related to weapons of mass destruction,” Politico reported.
NEW: Newly disclosed docs reveal more about the potentially classified information John Bolton may have had in his office. An FBI agent catalogued 5 categories — including WMDs and the UN.
w/ @joshgerstein https://t.co/oggMvLB1j2 pic.twitter.com/vugA0Fjt8R
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 24, 2025
On Wednesday, John Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell (also Hunter Biden’s lawyer) claimed many of the seized documents were decades old and declassified.
“These materials, many of which are documents that had been previously approved as part of a pre-publication review for Amb. Bolton’s book, were reviewed and closed years ago,” Lowell said in a statement to Politico.
“These are the kinds of ordinary records, many of which are 20 years old or more, that would be kept by a 40-year career official who served at the State Department, as an Assistant Attorney General, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and the National Security Advisor. Specifically, the documents with classification markings from the period 1998-2006 date back to Amb. Bolton’s time in the George W. Bush Administration,” Lowell added. “An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton.”
