Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton Indicted

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1:29John Flannery:Welcome to The Beat, everyone. We turn to breaking news. The Trump DOJ is indicting a former Trump official from the first term. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who served the Trump administration, indicted late today by a grand jury. The case involves allegations of mishandling classified information. Now, this is a lengthy indictment. Unlike some of the recent cases we've been covering, we've got about 26 pages that we've been flipping through, and they are trying to make a big case out of it. There's technically 18 criminal counts here that involve the retention that is holding on to or saving and the transmission that is sharing national defense information.

2:11John Flannery:Now, it details an account that begins in about 2018 in August, where the government says Bolton was abusing his position as NSA, sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities with what they describe as two unauthorized individuals. So under the rules here, they're not trying to name or shame those people. What we have reporting that suggests it's his family, his wife and daughter, who were involved in what his lawyer says today was basically a diary. But the DOJ is saying that this involved the unlawful retention of documents, writings, and notes relating to national defense in his own home.

2:48John Flannery:And then they used the same D word saying it was diary-like entries with, this is where they say the legal problem comes in, with the government says classified information, transcribing handwritten notes from his day's activities into word processing documents sent through a commercial non-governmental messaging application to his wife and daughter. And I can just tell you that's a lot of legal language, but just to break that down into plain English, they are saying that during his government service and after, he was keeping notes or diary entries that involved or included classified information, and that he was sharing that, and whether it's with his family or anyone else, even a single person under the law that is unauthorized can be, of course, the unlawful transmission of said information.

3:34John Flannery:So that's the core of this case, And while there are issues around whether Donald Trump likes another targeting of someone that while once was his aide is now had been a public critic, we'll get to that. But on the law here, Bolton's own attorneys say this was cleared up a long time ago and that it's known that he kept diaries. That's not a crime. They say they look forward to proving that Ambassador Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any such information. Now, Bolton is among a list of people that we have seen suddenly get indictments after Donald Trump had generally and sometimes publicly demanded more action on his so-called revenge list.

4:12John Flannery:We knew that FBI agents had already searched Bolton's home and office. That was earlier this summer, seizing documents. And this case may be different from some others. Remember that the Bolton probe, the underlying search for whether there was misconduct around classified information, began before Donald Trump even came into office. Trump didn't name him a target regardless of evidence, as he did say with Comey. And career prosecutors in Maryland have been looking at exactly this case for a longer period of time. As for the pressure campaign that we've been covering, well, you have former FBI Director Comey and New York Attorney General James named and then indicted.

4:52John Flannery:You have these other individuals who have been pursued. And so this entire set of actions at DOJ do come under this cloud. And remember, if you look at this and say, how could you ignore an environment where the DOJ has broken the rules and protocol? Well, we heard this week from Jack Smith, who described in detail why he, a DOJ prosecutor veteran, understood and knew that the process they used against, for example, FBI Director Comey was wrong, that it looked like they were building the case against the person rather than following the evidence to see where it led. And yet, one other thing you have to keep in mind is Donald Trump has been very happy to have anyone that he dislikes get in trouble.

5:38John Flannery:That can be true even if, in addition, the underlying evidence was reviewed or began being developed earlier on. We will follow this case and see whether there is a sort of a stench or a cloud over it based on the way Donald Trump has acted. As for the defendant here, remember, you can work for Donald Trump for a long time. You can be very loyal to him in government and politics, etc. And if you break with him at all, you may find yourself on the other side of his criticisms and targeting. And so as other people in the country, Republicans, people in the MAGA movement, people on Wall Street, people who say, well, if you just stay quiet or support Trump, you'll be OK as a practical matter.

6:18John Flannery:This would be a first big domino showing that may not work either, because remember, John Bolton has spent the bulk of his public career as a conservative, hawkish Republican in good standing in the Republican Party who rose all the way up to a top official in Trump's first term. The separation of powers. It is critical to the survival of the constitutional system. It's the kind of leadership that's been completely absent from the Clinton-Gore administration. I think it's the kind of leadership President Bush would provide. I will continue to work closely with members of Congress to advance President Bush's policies.

6:53The president spoke quite clear to that point in Germany today when he said Israel had a right to self-defense. We're not going to engage in the talks unless and until there's a full and verifiable suspension by Iran of its uranium enrichment activities. And the State Department needs a cultural revolution. Donald Trump is a strong personality, has strong views. He's got a strong resolve, which makes him the polar opposite of Barack Obama. Live with North Korea with nuclear weapons, which Susan Rice, Barack Obama's national security advisor, is prepared to do, or look at military force. These are not attractive options.

7:30We're here where we are today because of the pressure that the Trump administration has put on North Korea.

7:36John Flannery:They'd never seen an American president this tough before. That's how John Bolton sounded for the majority of his public career, life, and tenure. and the criticisms he's since voiced leaving office about Donald Trump tend to involve evidence, foreign policy, substance. He is someone who basically says that he is the conservative hawk and when he disagrees with people he's worked for or people in public life, he will make that case. That's as American as any other discourse or democracy. And whether you like or dislike John Bolton's foreign policy, this is one of those charges that will be heard in a lot of different places than some of the other targeting this year.

8:16John Flannery:That is, if you give any credence to what his lawyers say, that he is innocent and they argue this case is not on the level. I want to bring in our experts tonight, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, MSNBC analyst, former FBI general counsel and Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman, also an analyst here. Andrew, your response to this charge, I've tried to basically mention the two factors, that there is a longer case record here, and you can look at the evidence, and these national security information cases can be a little wonky. But on the other hand, this is not a DOJ in the last few months that's entitled to great automatic deference for every criminal case it has brought.

8:57John Flannery:Your thoughts? I do think with this one, you need to keep two thoughts in your head at the same time. these are serious charges there is no question if someone who is in the intelligence community you cannot send classified information including what's alleged top secret information that really when you they have some descriptions short ones about the nature of the information it is not quite as jaw-dropping as what we saw in the Mar-a-Lago case, but it is significant. He sent that over unclassified communication systems, Gmail, that's a fancy way of saying it, sent it over Gmail. You'd obviously know you can't do that.

9:44And sent it to two people, albeit his wife and his daughter, but still people who are not cleared to get it. And that risk manifested itself because, in fact, there was a hack. And so these are serious. There's also precedent for it. General Petraeus did something very similar to this. He was charged. Now, he was dealt with in a very different way, but remains to be seen what happens here. It's also the case that unlike the other charges with James Comey and Letitia James, there's a slew of career people who signed this indictment. At the very last page, you see what you normally would see, sort of trial attorneys, AUSAs.

10:28So all of that is sort of on the one hand. And as somebody in the intelligence community previously, I really do take this incredibly seriously. The reason you have to keep two things in mind at the same time is that there are two systems of justice going on. Donald Trump was alleged to do something far worse in many ways with many more documents and two forms of obstruction of justice, Pete Hegseth used Signal, which is also not a secure system for classified information, to what I think has to be classified information that was highly sensitive. And you don't see Pete Hegseth being investigated at all.

11:09I would note that Jack Smith, in the interview that I conducted said that any administration, any normal one, would have opened a criminal case on that. So I think there's sort of two things going on at the same time. And I have to tell you, I think the most serious is two systems of justice, because that is something that's a systemic law, a systemic problem with what's going on in America. Joyce? Yeah, I agree with Andrew, and I think the point he's making is exactly the right one. When we talk about selective and vindictive prosecution, this is a selective prosecution of John Bolton for very similar conduct to what Donald Trump was indicted for and what there's public reporting that Pete Hegseth did.

11:56That, I think, is something that Abby Lowell, the very capable lawyer representing Bolton, will force the court to address. But while that's true, I don't think it does anything to undercut what we read in this indictment. This is an indictment that you would expect to see from professional prosecutors. It's very different than the Eastern District of Virginia indictments that we've seen involving Jim Comey and Letitia James. There's a 20-page factual predicate for the charges that are brought against Bolton, 18 of them, for both retention of classified material and, more seriously, in my view, for transmitting it, as Andrew was discussing, through these unsecure lines of communication.

12:39I mean, I simply can't imagine sending a Gmail home at the end of the day that contained classified information. It's almost as though Bolton was carving out time during his day to begin writing his book and sending the information to his editors, albeit family members, in a non-secure form. Let me just say, Ari, the most damaging paragraph, I think, in the indictment. I've been through it once. I'm still reading it. It's a paragraph that suggests that Bolton discloses to the intelligence community that he's been hacked by Iran at some point. But he does not disclose that he was sending classified information using the account that got hacked.

13:21Now, look, the government has to prove willfulness and intent. That's the state of mind. That's always the difficulty in these Espionage Act cases. But boy, it's telling that he didn't make that disclosure when he disclosed the hack. Yeah.

13:37John Flannery:And Andrew, you mentioned the process near the end of this indictment. They quote Bolton's recent public criticism of Trump officials using Signal, using an app to discuss things that shouldn't be on there. And, you know, you mentioned this, which road you're on. If you're just on the road of proving the case as an attorney, that's the kind of evidence that you can argue shows at least contemporaneous or later awareness. that something's bad, so don't do it. You can't say, I didn't know, here he is in public making the same point, and he's got a lot of experience. On the other hand, Andrew, I thought it was odd reading it tonight because it draws attention to the fact that current officials in the same type of administration are using the same sloppy protocols.

14:23John Flannery:What did you make of that? So, you know, I was thinking about the same thing, And just if you put yourself in the position of career people in Maryland, the career prosecutors, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to not bring this case, which is at least on the face of it, because Troy said it remains to be proved. But on the face of it, this is what a charge would look like, whether it's using signal a lot. You know, if you're a career person, you can't say, well, I'm not going to do it because you know what, I've got an administration that's not willing to hold the president to account or the secretary of defense to account.

15:05And that's something, you know, judge is going to be able to decide whether that is selective prosecution or not. And the defendant can raise that. But if I'm a career person, and especially somebody who's been in the intelligence community, and there were people from the National Security Division that sort of owns this statute and has to approve charges under this statute, at least under normal times, you know, this is what you have to do. and you sort of can't say everybody gets a pass because the Secretary of Defense got one, even though for all of us sitting here, that is not the way the rule of law should work.

15:44John Flannery:Joyce Vance, I want to thank you for joining me tonight. We're going to finish a quick break and come back with Andrew in 90 seconds. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair? Done well. Kitchen sink install? Done well. Deck upgrades? Done well. Electrical upgrade? Done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project at Angie.com. This message comes from DSW, with their semi-annual sales starting now and featuring lots of deals.

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17:17John Flannery:We're back with DOJ vet Andrew Weissman and we're joined by Ankhush Cardouri, a former federal prosecutor and political writer. news breaking here of John Bolton's indictment, a Trump first term official. Ankush, one of the things that comes through is that Bolton was into his diaries and viewed that as on ramp to his book, that whatever that motive is legally, this was his focus. And a reading from the new charges, it says Bolton began sending basically sections of his book to his publisher and literary agent through a non-governmental messaging app. So again, the external stuff that's supposed to be limited.

17:54John Flannery:And what they say is bad is that the government concluded and told him that that manuscript already contained significant amounts of highly classified information. And their view legally is when you're doing that review to find out what can ultimately be published and shared, anyone like Bolton should know and has a duty not to pre-disclose what they haven't authorized yet. Yeah, I mean, these are pretty bad allegations. I mean, on the notion that he was preparing to write a book, I mean, I just got to say as an American, I find this so offensive that we put these people in these incredible positions of public trust, and they're there spending their time taking notes to write a book.

18:38It's pretty outrageous. And if the allegations in the indictment are accurate, that remains to be seen. Of course, they're just allegations. It's not evidence. This is going to be a pretty tough sled, tough sledding for Bolton. There's been, you know, already some suggestion that he'll have a potential selective prosecution defense. No doubt he will pursue it, maybe bring it. The problem that he is going to have is that in order to mount a selective prosecution defense, it's not enough to point out that you were singled out for an improper reason. You have to be able to show that other people who engaged in similar conduct have not been charged.

19:09And the problem is that plenty of people engaged in this sort of conduct have been charged over and over and over again.

19:16John Flannery:And again, that seems to hang over all of this. There was a different era where DOJ charges like this would be given a lot more deference. Of course, in journalism, we look to the underlying evidence and we try to give people the whole picture. And here you're both referring to what legally is called selective prosecution and what is this environment. Andrew, you mentioned some of the newsworthy things that former special counsel Jack Smith said to you in your discussion, and we saw that this week. It also got the president's attention, both the interviewee and the interviewer, if you will. And so I want to play what the president said about that.

19:51John Flannery:And you take a look. Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal. And I noticed his his interviewer was I think that was Weissman. And I hope they're going to look into Weissman, too. Weissman's a bad guy. And he had somebody in Lisa, who was his puppet, worked in the office really as the top person. And I think that she should be looked at very strongly. So the president responding, making allegations, and then I would say almost very casually or comfortably, using the power of his office to suggest to other individuals, DOJ veterans, yourself and Ms. Monaco, be investigated. Your response. Well, I think there are a number of things to note.

20:40One, this was done the day after Jack's interview was posted online at an academic institution where he spoke the prior week with me. So sort of commenting on that sort of to bring a criminal case because you don't like someone's First Amendment speech or the person interviewing that person would be consistent with numerous judges who have found that this administration has violated the First Amendment. I just want to say one thing about Lisa Monaco to suggest that anybody and any man needs to tell Lisa Monaco what to do is first, he obviously doesn't know her. And second, it is incredibly sexist.

21:30um so um and the final thing is you know a lot of times people cover adjectives and we have to cover it when the president is doing something like this but adjectives and adverbs are not evidence they're not even rational argument it's just invective understood uh and it's you know

21:52John Flannery:it's where we are so i wanted to get you on the record on that on kush uh the president again also admits to a lot of this. We've covered the parallels to things that Nixon long denied and that came out on tape were the smoking gun. And here, the smoke's coming out of the barrel proverbially all the time. I want to play this again, and I always tell viewers why we're playing certain things, not for its factual nature, but for its confessional nature. The president is claiming that like some tin pot dictator, he can phone in indictments of anybody. And that's not how the grand jury and legal system is set up.

22:29John Flannery:It very explicitly requires evidence, not just him in charge or anyone in charge. Take a listen to Trump on Wednesday saying he can direct these probes. But if anything, I think this Justice Department has been so respectful of the law. And what we're doing is nothing. Are you kidding? Nothing. They write stories. Why aren't they doing this, this? And I don't have to leave it up to them, but I choose to at this moment, at least. The claim is, I don't have to leave it up to the independent system or the DOJ. Then he claims he does. Fact check, false. He was caught addressing Pam Bondi, not leaving it up to her, but very directly agitating for two charges that have since come down.

23:16John Flannery:So I want to get your response legally on that and anything else about the Bolton case that we haven't hit yet. Well, I mean, look, as a legal matter, can he direct the attorney general to pursue some charges against him? It's just like a legal barrier. Not necessarily. But of course, that's not how we want the president to run the executive branch. It's not how we want the Justice Department to be run, where the president can just direct prosecutions against his enemies for any reason, even frivolous reasons. Well, unless you can finish, but to be precise about it, if he says, hey, I want you to make up a case or I don't care what the grand jury said.

23:51John Flannery:I mean, that's the goal, right? If the goal is, hey, indict person A, isn't a valid attorney general supposed to be able to respond with the facts and the law? And if the facts and the law don't support it, they say that's not acceptable. Yeah, well, look, if you were to bring contrived charges or fully fabricated charges, that's a different sort of a set of issues. What we're seeing so far is colorable, I would say, to be very terrible charges against Comey and Letitia James that are unlikely to produce convictions. The problem that he, I think, keeps confronting here, not just with his the true social post that he accidentally posted publicly, is every time he makes these statements saying, oh, Jack Smith is deserves to be prosecuted or Andrew deserves to be prosecuted.

24:42It makes it harder for his own Justice Department to successfully prosecute those people because everybody understands that it's a politicized effort. And to see his attorney general, deputy attorney general and FBI director just standing there silently nodding, I have to say, was quite shocking and demoralizing. I don't expect much from those people at this point, but it was a bit much to see that display yesterday. Yeah.

25:09John Flannery:And, Coach A. Andrew, thanks to both of you. There's a lot happening tonight. I'll tell you coming up, we have a very special guest talking about the Mamdani surge and the Trump effect. Also, when it comes to this government trying to undercut constitutional rights, misuse investigations, the other bombshell is efforts to hijack the IRS as a political tool. And the other night, that might be the top story. We get to that with John Flannery next.