CNN’s Elie Honig disputes notion John Bolton’s indictment completely political

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig disputed the notion on Thursday that the indictment against former national security adviser John Bolton is solely about political retribution.

A federal grand jury indicted Bolton in Maryland on 18 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified information on Thursday, where he is alleged to have “shared more than a thousand pages of information” about his daily activities as national security adviser. Honig said that Bolton’s alleged actions would have gotten anyone indicted regardless of their politics.

“It’s clear that Donald Trump is delighted at this indictment. That said, this is different than the indictments of Letitia James and Jim Comey. What John Bolton has alleged to have done here is deadly serious, would get anyone charged,” Honig said. “Let me just go through the highlights. What the allegation is that when John Bolton was the national security advisor, right, one of the most important positions in our government, he would take notes daily on what he had learned that day on a yellow legal pad, go home at night, type up these long detailed memos amounting to over a thousand pages, and then disseminate them to two people who we now are reporting were his wife and his daughter, and send it out over AOL.”

“That AOL email gets hacked by Iran. When his team reports that hack to the FBI, they don’t mention the fact that he was using that email to disseminate this highly classified information about military strikes, about weapons, about tactics, about sources and methods. He’s putting it out there to outsiders with zero security clearance. That kind of conduct is going to get anyone indicted,” Honig continued. 

WATCH:

During his entire time as national security adviser, Bolton regularly sent “diary-like” messages and emails to two individuals, who are believed to be his wife and daughter, by “transcribing his handwritten notes from his day’s activities into word processing documents” that he sent electronically, according to the indictment.

Bolton faces eight counts of transmission of national defense information (NDI) and ten counts of unlawful retention of NDI.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found “confidential” and “secret” markings inside Bolton’s Washington, D.C., office during an Aug. 22 raid including some with references to weapons of mass destruction, according to a September court filing.

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