“John Bolton Surrenders To Federal Authorities” is a headline I could have only dreamed of seeing 20 years ago, but this morning it came true. Following yesterday’s grand-jury indictment of Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor and W. Bush Iraq War architect/manipulator gave himself up and pled not guilty in federal court on charges of mishandling classified information. But if Bolton isn’t guilty, I’m a high-stakes poker professional.
The charges claimed that Bolton was “unlawfully hoarding” documents, that he sent classified information over grandpa communication medium AOL instant Messenger in 2018 and that he shared more than 1,000 pages of notes, while working on a memoir, with his wife and daughter, neither of whom had security clearances. “From on or about April 9, 2018, through on or about September 15, 2019, on a regular basis, Bolton sent diary-like entries to [his wife and daughter] that contained information classified up to the Top Secret/SCI level,” says the indictment.
Now, let’s be clear, even though we can dream, this isn’t Julius and Ethel Rosenberg or Aldrich Ames-like stuff. Bolton was just trying to enjoy a final cashing-in on a lifelong career of neoconservative warmongering. But Iranian hackers, representatives of a government that wouldn’t mind targeting Trump, not to mention Bolton, also have access to AOL. According to the indictment, they intercepted the messages. Looks like the man with the walrus mustache got a little careless with his “secret travel memos.”
Bolton said, in a statement, “These charges are not just about [Trump’s] 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,” Bolton said. “Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.”
It’s true that Bolton has had some unkind things to say about Trump since leaving his political orbit, and it’s also true that Trump is using any means necessary to target his political enemies, real or perceived. But unlike James Comey and Letitia James, Trump’s other two most powerful recent lawfare targets, Bolton’s indictment actually has a chance to stick. He almost certainly won’t serve a full 10-year sentence, but the grand jury indictment is quite specific and pointed. The law tends to be biased against a guy who’s “hoarding strategic government communications” for his memoir.
Let’s keep in mind that Bolton was a key architect of one of the biggest government deceptions of our time, or any time, the absolute insistence of the George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which led to one of the most pointless wars in American history. Talking to NPR in 2023, a sure sign that the political winds had shifted, Bolton said, “it depends on how you define a lie, because if you believe that’s a lie, then a lot of what I hear on NPR on any given day is a lie. To me, a lie is a statement that’s untrue, that’s uttered deliberately knowing it’s false. The administration didn’t lie.”
Sure, John. In my mind, Bolton’s indictment is about yellowcake uranium, not about saying mean things about Donald Trump in a memoir called The Room Where It Happened. But you can only go to war with the army you have. John Bolton as the ultimate defender of free speech, dissent and disagreement feels like a bit much to me. Next thing you know, Democrats will be trying to rehabilitate the reputation of the Cheney family. Truth be told, it’s kind of hard to believe.
Tag: DOJ
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John Bolton’s AOL chat with Iran
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Why did the FBI spy on Republican Senators?
The United States Senate Judiciary Committee this week revealed that Joe Biden’s FBI spied on eight Republican Senators and a Republican House of Representative Member in 2023. The underlying FBI record reveals the agency sought telephone tolling data as part of the Arctic Frost investigation that Special Counsel Jack Smith used to concoct an election fraud case against President Donald J. Trump. Although the indictment was ultimately dismissed when the President was re-elected in 2024, Smith expended the resources of the federal government for two years investigating the President in search of a federal crime.
The data revealed the telephone numbers the elected officials called, the dates of the calls and the duration of the calls made by Senator Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Senator Bill Hagerty (Tennessee), Senator Josh Hawley (Missouri), Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Senator Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Senator Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Senator Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) and Representative Mike Kelly (Pennsylvania) in the wake of the 2020 election.
Senator Chuck Grassley commented, “Based on the evidence to-date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate.”
More than egregiously unjust, the latest revelation shows just how deep the rot penetrated during the Biden years. During its long and occasionally ignoble history, the FBI has spied on everyone from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Elvis Presley, but tracking the communications of sitting United States Senators might be a new low.
Smith’s indictment charged the President with obstructing the election certification process on January 6, 2021, a process in which the aforenoted Senators were actively involved under a process governed by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. All Republicans, all MAGA and all Trump supporters, none of the Senators was previously known to have been targeted by law enforcement. One can only surmise Smith was contemplating an indictment in which those Senators, and perhaps others, would have been charged as conspiratorial co-defendants along with President Trump.
It is difficult to envision a world in which Joe Biden, his Attorney General and his FBI Director were unaware of these escapades by Bureau agents. It is more baffling still to fathom how any of those longtime public officials could possibly think the eventual eruption of the FBI’s insidious investigations would cause anything less than a counter-revolution, which is precisely what we are seeing unfold at this moment. Thus, the predicate evidence for procuring something as serious as a citizen’s telephone records should have been substantial. At this moment, no purported justification has been disclosed, let alone substantiated.
The FBI has some difficult questions to answer, and forthwith. Just what was the agency fishing for in 2021, and why? Who authorized the requests for the tolling data? How far up the chain of command at the FBI, DOJ and White House did the knowledge, authorization and directives go? What was the basis for targeting these individual Senators and Representatives? What particular crime in the federal criminal code did the FBI think the people’s duly elected representatives had committed to justify such a gross invasion of their privacy? Significantly, did the agency learn anything from its failed scorched earth campaign against President Trump and his allies? If so, what is the FBI doing to ensure abuses of this nature are not repeated?
FBI Director Kash Patel, whose plate is already full, needs to empower a massive clean up crew to repair the institutional damage done by his predecessors. The Senate should, and the President will, fully support him as he gets to the bottom of how it all went so wrong.