Bolton indicted on 18 Espionage Act counts over classified documents

A federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Maryland, indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton on October 16, 2025, on 18 counts under the Espionage Act: 8 for unlawfully transmitting national defense information and 10 for unlawfully retaining it. Prosecutors alleged Bolton used a personal email account to share more than 1,000 pages of diary-like notes containing top-secret information with his wife and daughter. The indictment noted that Iranian government-linked operatives hacked the email account and accessed classified materials stored there.