In the Trump era, which requires one to bounce from covering government shutdowns to Middle East peace deals to nominees with a “Nazi streak” (his words), it can be easy for important stories to get lost in the shuffle.
I wrote about James Comey’s indictment last month, but since then, the Trump administration has filed charges against two more of its political rivals — Letitia James and John Bolton — which I had yet to dive into.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about these cases as they wind through the courts, but as a starting point, I just wanted to lay out the facts of each one in a simple manner, to make sure we’re all on the same page. This way, you can follow (and talk about) each of the cases going forward with a better idea of what’s on the table in each one. I previously did that for Comey; now it’s time for James and Bolton.
It’s important to take each case one by one — these are very different charges, with very different backstories.
John Bolton
John Bolton is a longtime participant in Republican politics, dating back to the Reagan administration. He joined the first Trump White House in 2018 as national security adviser, despite being known for a foreign policy philosophy much more hawkish than the president’s. Predictably, the two quickly had a falling-out; within 18 months, Bolton had been fired (or resigned, depending who you ask). After leaving his employ, Bolton became a sharp critic of Trump’s, calling him “unfit to be president.”
Trump, in turn, has called for Bolton to be jailed in the past, although much less frequently than he has said that about James and Comey. Also unlike the cases against James and Comey, the investigation into Bolton that led to his indictment predates the second Trump administration: the probe was launched under Biden, and the charges were ultimately brought by a career prosecutor who has served in the Justice Department since 2013.
According to the indictment, Bolton stands accused of “sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor—including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level—with two unauthorized individuals, namely Individuals 1 and 2.”
The indictment also alleges that Bolton “unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level” at his home in Maryland (where he’s being charged) after leaving government.
“Individuals 1 and 2” aren’t named in the indictment, but they are reportedly Bolton’s wife and daughter. The day before Bolton started working at the White House, prosecutors allege, “Individual 1” set up a group thread with Bolton and “Individual 2” on a “non-governmental messaging application,” which Bolton wrote was “For Diary in the future!!!”
From then on, the indictment says, Bolton would regularly use the thread to send diary-like entries about his experiences as national security adviser, apparently to help prepare for a subsequent memoir — except the entries regularly included classified information, and were sent over a non-secure channel (his AOL account) to two people who lacked security clearance.
Among the information that was included in Bolton’s entries: “Intelligence about future attack by adversarial group in another country.” “Intelligence that a foreign adversary was planning a missile launch in the future.” Information about a “covert action planned by the U.S. government.” And more.
At one point, after sending 24 pages of materials, Bolton wrote: “None of which we talk about!!!” Individual 1 replied “Shhhhh,” and then added: “More to come with cloak and dagger…or something. So he says….”
The indictment also lists out a series of comments Bolton has made over the years criticizing other government officials for their handling of classified documents, to establish that he knew the importance of doing so. (Trump’s classified documents indictment did the same thing.)
As we know, there have been a lot of other government officials investigated for accusations surrounding classified material. (Remember that week in 2023 when even Dan Quayle and Al Gore were being asked to check and make sure they didn’t have stray documents laying around?) There are similarities between Bolton’s case and some of these others: like Trump, he was accused of keeping classified documents at home after leaving office; like Biden, some of the material appeared to be related to plans to write a memoir.
One big difference in this case, though: what happened next. In July 2021, Bolton’s team alerted the FBI that his AOL account appeared to have been hacked by Iran — the same account he had used to transmit all that classified information during his White House tenure. “At no point did BOLTON tell the FBI that, while he was the National Security Advisor, he had use the hacked email account to send Individuals 1 and 2 documents relating to the national defense, including classified information,” the indictment says. “Nor did he tell the FBI that the hackers now had this information.”
In other words: not just did Bolton have classified information after leaving office, like some other ex-officials did — but he used a non-secure channel to send classified information to relatives while in office, and a foreign adversary was able to take advantage of that and obtain some seriously sensitive information.
Bolton is charged with eight counts of transmitting national defense information, in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 793(d), and ten counts of retaining national defense information, in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 793(e).
Letitia James
Letitia James has served as attorney general of New York since 2019. In that capacity, in 2022, she filed a civil lawsuit against President Trump, his children, and company, alleging financial fraud. (A judge eventually ruled against Trump, ordering him to pay $355 million in penalties. An appeals court upheld the ruling but said the fine was excessive.)
Trump has since repeatedly called for her to be indicted, including in a September post on Truth Social (which was reportedly intended to be a direct message to Attorney General Pam Bondi), in which he announced that U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert was being fired and Lindsay Halligan — who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer — was being installed in his place.
Not even three weeks later, Halligan (having already indicted Comey) indicted James. The charges are a bit similar to the allegations leveled against Fed governor Lisa Cook, who Trump has tried to fire. (Both are the result of investigations carried out by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.)
According to the indictment, in August 2020, James purchased a three-bedroom home in Norfolk, Virginia, for about $137,000, financed with a mortgage loan of about $109,600.
Under the loan agreement, the indictment says, James was required to “occupy and use the property as her secondary residence” and was prohibited from using the home “as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.”
Prosecutors say that this promise allowed James to obtain “favorable loan terms not available for investment property,” saving her almost $19,000 over the life of the loan.
However, the indictment alleges, the home “was not occupied or used by JAMES as a secondary residence and was instead used as a rental investment property, renting the property to a family of (3).” In her tax returns, James allegedly referred to the home as “rental real estate.”
James was charged with one count of bank fraud (in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1344), for allegedly defrauding the bank from which she obtained the loan, and one count of false statements to a financial institution (in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1014).
The indictment doesn’t tell us much more than that, but the story appears to be a bit more complicated. According to the New York Times, the Norfolk home is occupied by James’ great-niece, who pays no rent; James reportedly comes to the home “several times a year…for an extended stay.” This reporting contradicts the indictment’s allegation that the home is used as an investment property and never occupied by James.
It appears that the property may have been rented out before the great-niece moved in: as the indictment says, James reported receiving between $1,000 and $5,000 in income from the house in 2020, the year it was purchased. (She did not list income from the house again.) However, according to Lawfare, the agreement James signed allows short-term renting during the first year after purchase, and then offers more flexibility after that.
Halligan texted a Lawfare journalist, claiming that the Times reporting was inaccurate. However, when pressed for speciiics, she offered none.
Seems the indictment of Bolton has more to it, but it boggles my mind that Trump took all those boxes of documents, some top secret, and nothing was done.
I have read that bank fraud charges for these type of mortgage applications are rare, because they are viewed as a poor prioritization of investigatory and judicial resources