Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton surrenders to authorities

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John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, surrendered to authorities in Maryland on Friday after being indicted by the US Department of Justice, in the latest legal blow to a critic of the president.

The charges by the Maryland US attorney’s office on Thursday related to Bolton’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“I think he’s a bad person,” the president told reporters on Thursday, referring to the indictment. “It’s too bad, but that’s the way it goes.”

Bolton, who arrived at a Maryland federal courthouse on Friday morning, maintained that his conduct was lawful and accused Trump of using the justice department to advance his own agenda.

“I have become the latest target in weaponising the justice department to charge those [Trump] deems to be his enemies,” he said in a statement.

He added that the DoJ had used his own diaries about his time in office, which include criticism of Trump, against him.

“These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents.”

Earlier on Thursday, US attorney-general Pam Bondi said in a statement that anyone who jeopardised national security would be held accountable.

“There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” she said. “No one is above the law.”

The indictment against Bolton, a Republican who also served as former president George W Bush’s ambassador to the UN, is the latest against one of Trump’s political foes. Critics of the Trump administration say the DoJ is bending to the president’s wishes — accusations rejected by the department.

The DoJ also recently indicted former FBI director James Comey, who oversaw a probe into Trump’s alleged links to Russia, and Letitia James, the New York attorney-general who has brought a case against the president. Comey has pleaded not guilty and James has called the charges “baseless”.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Bolton illegally shared information — some classified as top secret — about foreign adversaries, future attacks and foreign policy matters via his personal email and messaging accounts.

According to the indictment, Bolton between 2018 and 2025 allegedly shared more than 1,000 pages of information about his role as national security adviser with two unnamed, unauthorised relatives he at one point referred to as his “editors”.

Bolton’s notes included descriptions such as “while in the Situation Room, I learned that . . . ” or “the intel briefer said . . . ”.

Court documents say many of the “diary-like entries” were allegedly printed and held in Bolton’s personal residence in Maryland. They included intelligence on a rival country’s leaders as well as information disclosing sources.

After he left government in 2019, a “cyber actor” prosecutors believe was linked to Iran hacked Bolton’s personal email and accessed classified information, they said. A representative for Bolton notified the government, but did not disclose that the email account included such sensitive material, according to the indictment.

Bolton faces eight counts of transmission of national defence information and 10 counts of unlawful retention of such material. They each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, although sentences for federal crimes are often lower than maximum levels.

The FBI in August raided Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, in the suburbs of Washington.

Trump and Bolton fell out soon after he left his post as national security adviser in September 2019, during Trump’s first term.

Bolton called Trump “unfit” to hold office in his book The Room Where it Happened, while the president has called Bolton a “low-life” and “not a smart guy”. The president has also rebuked Bolton’s criticism of his approach to brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.