Bolton pleads not guilty to charges of sharing classified information

John Bolton pleaded not guilty Friday to charges accusing the former President Trump national security advisor turned critic of emailing classified information to family members and keeping top-secret documents at his Maryland home.

- BY ERIC TUCKER AND ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

FORMER national security advisor John Bolton, left, exits court in Maryland.

(ERIC LEE Bloomberg)

Bolton was ordered released from custody after making his appearance before a judge in the third Justice Department case brought in recent weeks against an adversary of the Republican president.

The case accusing Bolton of putting the country's national security at risk is unfolding against the backdrop of growing concerns that the Trump administration is using the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to pursue his political foes.

Bolton has signaled he will argue he is being targeted because of his criticism of the president, describing the charges as part of a Trump "effort to intimidate his opponents."

The investigation into Bolton, however, began under the Biden administration and appears to have followed a more conventional path toward indictment than other recent cases against perceived Trump enemies, who were charged by Trump's handpicked U.S. attorney in Virginia over the concerns of career prosecutors.

Bolton is accused of sharing with his wife and daughter more than 1,000 pages of notes that included sensitive information he had gleaned from meetings with other U.S. government officials and foreign leaders or from intelligence briefings. Authorities say some of the information was exposed when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government hacked Bolton's email account he used to send the diary-like notes about his activities to his relatives.

The Justice Department also alleges Bolton stored at his home highly classified intelligence about a foreign adversary's plans to attack U.S. forces overseas, covert action taken by the U.S. government and other state secrets.