John Bolton was indicted by the FBI today on multiple counts of unlawfully transmitting and retaining national defence information using his personal email address, and Iran hacked his email address in 2019-2021 and gained access to the information he shared/stored
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The indictment makes Bolton, 76, the third of the US president's political opponents to face charges in recent weeks. He
could face decades in prison.
According to a 26-page indictment filed at a court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday, Bolton is charged with
eight counts of transmission of national defence information (NDI) and 10 counts of unlawful retention of NDI.
An indictment in the US justice system is a formal accusation issued by a grand jury - a group of members of the public set up by a prosecutor to review evidence to determine if a case should proceed.
Prosecutors accuse Bolton of
illegally transmitting top secret information about US national defence using his personal email and other messaging apps.
"These
documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations," the court papers state.
The unauthorised information includes "
diary-like entries from Bolton's time as the National Security Advisor" and were allegedly "printed and stored" at Bolton's home in Bethesda, Maryland.
The indictment also says that,
at some point between September 2019 and July 2021, "a cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran" hacked his personal email account and gained access to the classified information.
Bolton is the third of the US president's political opponents to face charges in recent weeks.
www.bbc.co.uk