The indictment of John R. Bolton highlights what national security experts say is the inherent danger of using everyday messaging systems to share government secrets and raises questions about whether the Trump administration is applying the Espionage Act fairly.
Mr. Bolton, who once worked as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser but has for years been an outspoken critic of the president, was charged this week with 18 counts of mishandling classified information by either illegally transmitting or retaining national defense secrets. Prosecutors say he used personal email accounts and a messaging app to share highly sensitive information with two family members who did not have security clearances.
The allegations in his case are a pointed example of what counterintelligence officials call “spillage,” which is when classified information tumbles into nonsecure places, either by accident or from recklessness by someone trusted to keep it safe.
It is a recurring concern that dates back decades. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was investigated for using a private email server to communicate as secretary of state. In March, it emerged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had relayed the details of a coming military strike in Yemen over Signal, a commercial messaging app, in a group chat that mistakenly included a journalist.
In Mrs. Clinton’s case, national security officials initially feared hackers might have infiltrated a similarly insecure system, though the F.B.I. investigation ultimately found no evidence of that.
In Mr. Hegseth’s case, Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly dismissed the idea of investigating the breach, even though the conversation took place outside the government channels typically used for confidential discussions like war planning.
“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Ms. Bondi said three days after the disclosure of the breach. When Mr. Bolton was charged after having been the subject of a yearslong investigation that gained momentum under the Biden administration, Ms. Bondi declared: “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
The inconsistency of the Justice Department’s approach toward Mr. Bolton and current administration officials was striking, national security experts said, acknowledging that every case is different.
“We have no factual basis to believe a criminal investigation was ever commenced with respect to Signalgate, notwithstanding that plans, a term referenced in the Espionage Act, for a military attack were shared on a commercial messaging service,” said David Laufman, who once led the Justice Department section that investigates the mishandling of classified information.
“If there’s going to be prosecution only of individuals adverse to the administration, and not of people in the administration, that undermines the legitimacy of the Department of Justice as a consistent and neutral administrator of the rule of law,” he added.
Jack Smith, the former special counsel who twice secured indictments against Mr. Trump when he was out of office, made a similar point in remarks made public this week, denouncing the Justice Department’s apparent indifference to the Signal chat scandal.
In the department’s history, he said in an interview at University College London, “there is no administration, Republican or Democrat, that does not open an investigation in that situation.”
The Justice Department did not comment.
Mr. Bolton, 76, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life. He has vowed to fight the charges, which he described as part of the president’s “intensive effort to intimidate his opponents.”
The indictment sought to use his own words — and by extension, the same Signal messaging scandal that Ms. Bondi had dismissed — to make the case against Mr. Bolton.
“There’s no excuse for it,” he said about revelations that Mr. Hegseth had used Signal to share details of the pending attack on Houthi insurgents with senior Trump administration officials.
The existence of the chat spilled out because one of the administration officials in it, Michael Waltz, had accidentally added a journalist, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group.
At the time, Mr. Waltz served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, the same role Mr. Bolton played in the first Trump administration.
In laying out the case against Mr. Bolton, prosecutors offered a vivid account of what they described as government secrets ending up in the hands of one of the United States’ most significant adversaries, Iran.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Bolton shared more than 1,000 pages of “diary” notes with close family members, and that he later used those notes to help write a memoir about his time in the White House between 2018 and 2019.
Mr. Bolton occasionally used his personal AOL and Google email accounts to send those notes, the charging document says, adding that in 2021, he was contacted by someone who apparently had hacked his account and stolen that information.
“I do not think you would be interested in the F.B.I. being aware of the leaked contact of John’s email,” said the message sent on July 25, 2021. The sender helpfully attached some of the sensitive information. “This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the G.O.P. side! Contact me before it’s too late.”
Prosecutors assert that Mr. Bolton was hacked by someone associated with the Iranian government. The New York Times has previously reported that under the Biden administration, American officials had found his hacked emails in the hands of a foreign intelligence service — allegations that suggest Mr. Bolton’s secrets spilled into the hands of a hostile government that he has long argued should be overthrown.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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