The John Bolton Indictment

John Bolton, the walrus of fascism, has been indicted for egregious mishandling of national defense information. Bolton was charged with 18 counts, each carrying a 10-year maximum prison sentence. I get the following comment over my recent video about prosecuting Dick Cheny’s crimes in the Second Iraq war and beyond. For all we know, Bolton sent false info over AOL and is being prosecuted for it to sell the lie, working with Trump in a deception game. Not sure, but it made me think, hey, that’s a great great excuse to do a full video on John Bolton’s super interesting indictment, which is a delight to read and and understand. Uh, but I thought a lot about the comment there. Donald Trump is such a polarizing figure.

Some people think that if anybody opposes Trump for like five minutes, maybe there’s something redeeming about that person, which may be a little too categorical. Uh John Bolton has taken actions throughout his long career that are [snorts] scarcely deserving of praise. But this latest chapter involving his free distribution of our nation’s defense secrets over an America online account and some form of group uh nonsecure chat should probably explain the man pretty well and everyone should know the story that just cuz the guy was supposedly in the Trump resistance that doesn’t mean you want people doing what he was doing and you might want him to go to prison. So let’s dig in. What Bolton did was super bad and even if you hate Trump you are going to enjoy this prosecution.

Guys, it’s time for some game theory. Welcome back to Game Theory Today. I’m Eric Garland. So guys, I’m back to doing videos as Twitter seems increasingly broken as a platform and is way less fun and YouTube is really designed for much more thoughtful and evergreen content. So, here we are together. Do you like getting your news and analysis this way? Then do me a huge favor and hit subscribe. That’s how I can monetize this channel, which will allow me to do all kinds of stuff. Uh, it’s a new adventure. So, click like, subscribe, hit the bell, all that good stuff. If you’re like me, you don’t know where to go for news anymore, which is why I’m here making my own version of it. So, thanks for your support already.

Today, we’re focusing on John Bolton, whose role during the first Trump administration was so dodgy, he’s now facing criminal prosecution over it during the second Trump administration. This has been framed as retribution against one of Trump’s political enemies. And having read the indictment in gruesome detail, I need to warn you, somebody not liking some politician you don’t like is not sufficient reason to defend their criminal activities. And just because somebody writes sassy tweets against somebody that you currently don’t appreciate does not mean that they should be allowed to engage in espionage. And that is what’s going on with John Bolton. The accusations by the Department of Justice are heart attack serious and the case appears open and shut.

And as you’ll probably agree once we dig in, you don’t want anybody doing what he is accused of doing. So first, who is John Bolton? John R. Bolton II is a lifelong DC swamp creature, a graduate of Yale University and its law school. one one guy who joined the US government early in his career and has worked in a variety of of official roles over the decades. During the Reagan administration, Bolton worked under uh Attorney General Ed Me as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs where he guided policy around how the executive branch works with congressional oversight in particular. Two of the events he’s most known for is keeping the CIA from having to report to Congress about individual covert actions in advance of them being undertaken and for helping protect the Reagan administration from consequences that resulted from the Iran Contra scandal.

The first action was probably quite reasonable in retrospect given actions that the president does have to take. not having to to run to Congress before you dispatch the CIA on every little thing is probably a good policy to have uh to to have tried to institute back in the 80s. Uh the second looks a lot more dodgy over time, especially given the proclivity of the bad guys from the Iran Contra affair to turn up in all kinds of gross places around US government ever since. Uh, in the years after the Reagan administration, Bolton became affiliated with the Project for the New American Century, which was the neoconservative group that pushed for war in Iraq before and after the conveniently timed attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Bolton joined the Bush 43 administration as under secretary of state for arms control and international security. and he led the charge on spreading fake intelligence that Iraq was a threat to the United States due to its possession of weapons of mass destruction. There was no such intelligence that they really had that they were not a threat and guys like Bolton went around making sure that we ended up in the desert for 20 years on a pack of lies. He was then proposed as the US ambassador to the United Nations, which even the Republicans in Congress back then couldn’t stomach. So Bolton merely served out his term as an interim appointee. During the Obama administration uh around 2010, Bolton became a lobbyist for the Iranian terrorist group Mujahedin Akal, a group that was financed by Saddam Hussein in the 80s to fight the Iranian regime and commit acts of terrorism.

Not long after Bolton’s engagement uh with the group, I think he made around $180,000 that he’s admitted to there, uh Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then took the MAK off its list of recognized terrorist groups. Those are some connections you maybe didn’t expect. Few years later, on the run-up to the 2016 election, John Bolton was paying the Russian intelligence front Cambridge Analytica to target US voters through social media. And from April 9th, 2018 until September 10th, 2019, Bolton was assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, also known as the National Security Adviser. And this is when the e the espionage comes up. So, let’s get into the associated dorky government document.

You want to have fun, get into Pacer. Let’s do it. Because this stuff is not good. When you read this, you are not going to say that this is just a political prop pro prosecution just cuz he’s a Trump critic. And I’m going to give you an active comparison. You look at the Jim Comey uh indictment down in the Eastern District of Virginia and it’s weak and it almost looks like it’s made to be defeated. And it’s like, wait, he lied to Ted Cruz because Comey is contradicting what McCabe told him one time. It’s really on the on the fence. It’s like, why is Trump going after him? And why are they going after him with with such a a weak-wisted punch here? That ain’t the Bolton indictment. Let’s get into it.

Here we have the indictment handed down from a grand jury convened in greb belt, Maryland, the district of Maryland, United States of America versus John Robert Bolton II for transmission of national defense information in violation of 18 US code 793 subsection D and retention of national defense information 18 USC 793 subsection E for violations of the Espionage Act. Yep. This is this is bad. This is not what you want uh later in your career. But uh here we go. By way of introduction, John Robert Bolton II resided in Montgomery County, Maryland. That’d be Bethesda. And from the 1980s through 2019, as previously uh described, he served intermittently in a variety of senior US government positions.

assistant attorney general under Ed me during Reagan as we discussed under secretary of state for arms control for the department of state and US ambassador to the United Nations although even the Republicans couldn’t uh vote for him without throwing up in their mouths and so he was temporary and his last position of public service April 2018 to September 2019 as assistant to the president for national security affairs commonly known as the national security adviser. Those dates end up being very important. So, keep an eye on them. Role of National Security blah blah blah since 1947. Truman blah blah blah. The function of the NSC uh the National Security Council included advising the president with respect to the integration of domestic foreign and military policies relating to national security, assessing and appraising the objectives, commitments and risks of the US in relation to the actual and potential military power of the United.

In other words, this guy had a job that was just top secret national security all over it. He works directly for the president of the United States. It’s very, very responsible position. And nobody gets to this part of the game without knowing that you’re not allowed to share top secret stuff with your family members over uh group chat. Like, he knows better. That’s this whole point of the the indictment is just to remind anybody that dude knows better. Three, Bolton was the national security adviser between April 9th, 2018 and September the 10th, 2019. National security advisers typically advise the president, blah blah blah blah. He had access to some of the most sensitive and closely guarded national secrets and he signed numerous non-disclosure agreements.

Even when you have a clearance, by the way, they will introduce you to a new file and you’ll have to sign another stack of documents that threaten you with prison if you mess around exactly the way he messed around. So, this is a reminder that this dude has been signing this stuff for decades. That if he emails the stuff that he learns at work to his wife over his AOL account that he’s going to go to prison. So, none of this is a surprise to this jerk. Okay. Blah blah blah. Paragraph 4, he was granted a top secret clearance. Of course, he was cuz he’s national security adviser. You have to be cleared on all sorts of stuff. Oh, he was at that level here. Paragraph six, he had a job that was so intense that he might have to do it in the middle of the night.

So, they actually put what’s known as a skiff, a sensitive compartmented information facility, uh that will let you uh review andor discuss within it sensitive compartmented information, which is even more top secrets than top secret. So, Bolton had a skiff that is totally soundproof, light proof, uh you know, spy devices don’t work in it, on it, around it. He had one of these in his house, which is not uncommon for the very top most important functionaries within the government. So, he had one installed that was certified while he held this job. And they even descertified it about a month after he held the job. And from that date, October 16, 2019 through the present, no location within his home was approved for the lawful storage of classified information.

No pieces of paper, no documents, no nothing that was classified had a right to be at his house. Though it did from April 2018 through September 2019 because they came in and they said, “Yes, this is a skiff. It’s functioning. It’s completely impervious to compromising emanations.” I think is the legal term of art. Uh it’s the cone of silence. Um and in October 16th, 2019, it was no longer approved to have top secret anywhere in it or near it. So if he still had top secret, he’s breaking the law. So this is all pretty cut and dry. Seven. While national security adviser, Bolton learned national defense and classified information through a variety of means, including intelligence briefings. Now, that’s when some nerd comes over to you from Langley or the Pentagon or wherever and tells you what’s going on.

Might have some pieces of paper. He might tell you some things uh verbally about what our spies have found out, what our spy satellites have gathered, whatever. Intelligence reports, generally written versions of same. And meetings with members of the US intelligence community, more nerds, including the National Security Agency, the NSA, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Those are probably the two most important uh spy agencies. So also the US military and foreign government officials, other people’s spies. In addition to having a home skiff, while national security adviser, Bolton also had access to a variety of secure telecommunication systems that he could use to discuss and communicate classified information.

So he did not need to just uh yell out his kitchen window to someone else in Bethesda if he wanted to discuss classified information. There were the US government, it will not surprise you, provides you a number of secure ways to talk about stuff no one else is allowed to know. Moreover, Bolton had access as the national security adviser to a variety of luxurious classified spaces in the White House, the executive office building and [snorts] uh the the OOB and uh other locations in the Washington area and elsewhere where he could readily learn, read, and discuss classified and sensitive information with others who were authorized to know, receive, discuss, and make decisions based on such information.

that did not include Facebook Messenger or Google Chats or Google Drives or AOL. He had access to pretty much every place in Washington DC that has a skiff in it, which is there’s a ton. So, he did he was not forced by necessity to use his AOL email account. Dear God, he was really doing that. Um, eight. From honor about April 9th, 2018 through at least on or about August 22nd, 2025, which was late this past summer, when he got raided by the FBI, Bolton abused his position as national security adviser by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as national security adviser, including information relating to the national defense, which was classified up to top secret SCI.

I with two unauthorized individuals, namely individuals one and two, who I believe are are his wife and daughter if if memory serves. Bolton also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to TSSCI in his home in Maryland. So these aren’t just documents that were created by other agencies, but he had a habit all throughout the time that he worked for Trump. He created his own documents based on a milange of what he read, what he heard, what other people were telling him, both from our country and other countries. He created his own documents in pen and ink. uh so you know pen and paper and he would then type it up on unclassified word do word word processors and send it to individuals one and two from the beginning as if that was maybe his intention the whole time was to get this information out of the national security council into the hands of people who had no legal right to know any of this handle any of this Uh, and we get into the identities of of who these people are just so it’s clear.

That’s very important who they are and that they were inappropriate because you cannot be read into a file because you’re not part of the program. You don’t have a need to know. But if you know if you’re a four-star general, maybe you didn’t have a need to know for this or that, but you’re a four-star general. Ah, we kind of trust you in other situations. So maybe it’s not as bad. Or maybe it’s this situation and it is as bad. Individual one whose identity is known to the grand jury was related to Bolton, resided in the district of Maryland. Kind of sounds like his wife, right? Related by family and then also resided the same place he did. Never held a US security clearance and was not authorized to access, receive or maintain the classified information Bolton shared.

It’s very bad. Uh, Bol, individual two, whose identity is known to the grand jury, was related to Bolton, but family connection, never ever held a US security clearance, and was not authorized to access, receive, or maintain the classified information Bolton shared related to his work. Yikes. Okay. 11. From hon or about April 9th, 2018 through on or about September 15th, on a regular basis, Bolton sent diarylike entries to individuals one and two that contain information classified up to TSSCI. And there’s three levels of classification. Confidential, secret, top secret. Top secret is marked as such because it will create grave damage to the national security of the United States if it’s ever revealed outside of where we say it can go.

Confidential is like uh that might sting. Secret is don’t do that. Top secret is very very bad. And the SCI the sensitive compartmented information that means it may include sources and methods exactly how we got something. It could get somebody killed if it’s if the information is revealed in an uncontrolled way. Um, it’s the worst of the worst there. That’s what he was sending to his family every day that he was working for the White House. This time, Bolton wrote many of these diarylike entries by transcribing his handwritten notes from his day’s activities into word processing documents, which he then electronically sent to individuals one and two through a commercial non-governmental messaging application.

So as insecure as it can get over commercial lines where any really powerful intelligence service with some gumption could eventually come by it. Not good. On other occasions, Bolton used his personal non-governmental email accounts such as email accounts hosted by AOL and Google. Uh not even not even the secure emails uh that of Switzerland or nothing. over AOL and Google. Oh, okay. To email information classified up to the top secret SCI level to individuals that their personal email accounts, God knows where the hell that is. At no point did Bolton have authorization to store or transmit the classified information he sent to these people by his personal electronics and accounts. Nor did at any time they have the authorization.

It was totally illegal. All this is very, very bad. Super illegal. And every single corporation where who the hell knows who works at these corporations, everybody in the chain here was getting real time access to what was going on in the White House. That’s extremely bad people. Even if even if you don’t know that much about uh intelligence nery here, just imagine our most sensitive secrets being in the hands of the idiots who work in tech companies who have no clearance themselves. You You don’t like that, do you? Does that sound good? We should just be flinging the White Houses top secrets just out to a dozen different corporations without thinking about it. I don’t know, man. Paragraph 12.

At some unknown time, but no later than August 22nd, 2025, many of the diarylike entries from Bolton’s time as National Security Adviser, including entries that contain national defense information classified up to top secret SCI, were printed out and stored in Bolton’s personal residence, where basically anybody who wanted to could get in and get to it and all that. Uh, digital copies of some of the diar entries that contain national defense information up to top secret, also stored on personal electron. In other words, this stuff was all over his house. any motivated spy could go in and get it. Let’s see. So, he had this skiff in his house, right? But at no point during Bolton’s time as national security adviser afterwards, including when his home skiff was decommissioned, did Bolton tell the US government that he had sent national defense and classified information to his family over commercial emails, which actually becomes important because he gets hacked by the Iranians.

So, uh, it’s something that, you know, they should have known about. Oh, right. Par 14. That’s the next thing that the, uh, the feds tell us about. At some point between when Bolton left government in September of 2019 and July 2021, a cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, hacked Bolton’s personal email account, and gained unauthorized access to the classified national defense information in that account, which Bolton had previously emailed to individuals one and two. A representative for Bolton notified the US government of the hack in July 2021, but you know, neglected to tell the US government that uh it was chock full of of top secret uh information. Uh which I I guess you can get why he might um omit that part.

Uh so the rest of this is just some allegations about the the laws about handling top secret which is in the damage to national security which means just don’t don’t do it. [laughter] Just gave it’s supposed to stay where it’s supposed to stay. Um paragraph 21 and 22 are kind of important here because it explains just just how bad it is that this stuff would get out. And they do talk about what was contained within these documents that he was trafficking uh and that he gave to his family members who had no right to them. Uh classification marking SI was an SEI control system that indicated the information was derived from special intelligence that the intelligence information was derived for the monitoring of foreign communications signals.

So also known as SIG int. Um the signals intelligence is collected by the national security agency which is responsible for providing foreign sigant to US policy makers and military forces. Um the NSA is our most powerful agency by far and we do not want anybody knowing just exactly what we can listen in on. So that’s why one reason that we keep our intelligence close to the vest because otherwise everybody knows what we can get at. and paragraph 22 classifications marking H uh CS was an SCI control system that indicated the information was from the most sensitive human intelligence or human operations. Um so human classified sources are usually people that we’ve convinced to be traitors in their own country and they are turning information over to us uh through our clandestine services.

So that basically the CIA gets them to uh betray their own countries. We don’t want it known who they are. And sometimes the fact that we even know something will indicate that we must have a mole inside some uh some agency within their government and once they see what’s out there, they can go through the six people that might have uh access to it and do very bad things to them. So, we want to protect everything that’s marked SI and HCS. And Bolton certainly did not cuz he handed it to his family members. Now’s where it gets interesting because you get to see the the dates when he is collecting up and misusing all this classified intelligence and how fast his literary agency has it and how fast the publishers Simon and Schuster have all this stuff they have no right to have the how tight the dates are.

So paragraph 27 here as set forth between hon or about April 9th 2018 and September 15th 2019 Bolton sent individuals one and two contemporaneous notes on a regular basis. This is the diary of everything kind of been through it. The information contained in these notes included detailed information. Bolton learned from all these meetings with senior members of the US government. Intelligence briefings from the spooks in the military. discussions with foreign leaders, foreign intelligence and military organizations and intelligence products and reports. He was handing all of that to his family members. Um he took these notes handwritten on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex and then he was handing it to his family members and otherwise capturing what he was learning at the White House in the most sensitive places.

uh at the most critical times and then turning them over in a variety of technical ways that anybody wanted to get a hold of them, they could. And the detail he used was uh very granular. A description of classified information related to a foreign government’s activity might begin with the intel briefer said. Or description of classified information learned during a military briefing might begin with while in the situation room, I learned that. I mean, you’re talking about drilling down to individual meetings, being able to reconstruct who went where in the White House to it that makes my skin crawl. And in at least one communication, Bolton referred to these two individuals from his family as his editors, as if he had a book planned the whole time.

The whole time. The whole time. [clears throat] On or about April 8th, 2018, the day before Bolton officially began his duties as national security adviser, individual one created a group chat with Bolton and Individual 2 on a non-governmental messaging application. Why are we using this now? The encryption to which individual one responded, “Yep, why not?” Bolton responded, “For diary in the future.” So the day before Bolton began his duties at the White House, he set up a a chat with his family members with the plan that he was going to be creating a diary and they were the editors. They would be capturing all this even though they had no legal right to handle secrets of this uh severity, this this seriousness.

they were going to be editing for a publisher in the future. And so we get into the individual acts that are alleged here. April 22nd, so as not long after he begins, he sends a 25page document which described information that he learned while he was at work. Um, you know, he’s I’ve done much of Friday in London because I didn’t take many notes and I wanted to get it down before I forgot. and individual one stating, “Do we get a diary today?” Um, they were keeping pressure on him, making sure that the flow of illicit intelligence kept kept going. Um, July 23rd sending a message, “More stuff’s coming.” And then a 24-page document that described information learned while national security adviser.

The only interesting thing is what senior US government official might have said from whatever foreign language interpreter which you didn’t tell us. So these non-cleared individuals are poking Bolton to to turn over as much as possible right down to the translator level of what these foreign officials might have been saying. And uh I don’t know guys, I’m speechless in some ways. It’s it’s it’s really really bad. It goes on and on. No commentary on foreign country one judicial system article I sent or administration sentiment on the arrest in foreign company. I’m working on it. So, you know, he’s working in these classified situations with his his family members over his shoulder the whole time.

So, what what are they what are they up to here? It goes on for pages and pages. a 77page document, 10-page document, over a thousand pages of stuff straight from the National Security Council to suburban, Maryland, where the guy’s wife and daughter are home. So, this is where we get to, I think, the meat of this indictment. The timing, how fast Bolton goes from merely committing espionage and excfiltrating all this top secret intelligence to his wife and daughter and how it gets to Simon and Schuster, the publishers, and how fast it gets there. Honor about September 15th, 2019, 5 days after he was no longer national security adviser, he sends a six-page document, document H, which contained information learned at work.

Dramatic ending, but there will be a new diary talking with a a a book publisher because they have a right of first refusal. And individual one responds now bookw writing. We’re we’re already he’s out of office for five days. They’re already writing a book. Talking with publisher because they have a right of first refusal. Okay. September 24th, 14 days after he’s no longer employed. Bolton left the messaging chat group with individuals one and two, memorializing his time as national security adviser. So the relevant activities before and after Bolton’s tenure on about September 11th, 2019, the day after his tenure as national security adviser ended, a literary agent representing Bolton sent an email to a book publisher describing a book about Bolton’s time as NSA that Bolton intended to publish.

They didn’t wait a day from the time his duties ended to be talking to a publisher. I can tell you having published books these things take time. You you have to come up with a proposal and it can be when you’re very famous that can be a very informal proposal but you have to come up with a proposal on what you’re going to produce. Then you have to have some kind of an outline. Well, it didn’t take 24 hours for these people. Very interesting. The literary agent stated, among other things, that Bolton’s forthcoming book would include Bolton’s impressions of his time as National Security Adviser in a meticulously observed manner with direct quotes from all parties based on contemporaneous notes.

It’s quite a that’s quite a promise to make when the White House still can put you in prison over you doing something like this, but okay. uh two months earlier and while Bolton was still on the clock at the White House on or about July 19th, 2019, the literary agent sent Bolton a letter stating it was with enthusiasm the agent was again exploring a book with Bolton. So Bolton knew that he was going to go public with this classified information while he was at the White House. Bolton earned more than a million dollars in an advance to his publisher. Huh? On or about December 12th, Bolton s began sending draft portions of his book to his publisher and literary agent for review and comments. Folks, it takes 6 months to get a good manuscript up and running.

That’s assuming that you’ve all agreed on the outline of what the book’s going to be. But then again, Bolton’s family started while he was still receiving classified intelligence. They were writing the whole time. So, there’s a compressed time frame. As I said, Bolton sent these drafts via a non-governmental messaging application. Well, you don’t normally need a some form of secure communications to put out a a a book manuscript unless your manuscript is chalk full of classified intelligence, which his was. So, December 30th, 2019, Bolton submitted a manuscript of his book titled The Room Where It Happened. Nice Hamilton reference. a White House memoir to [snorts] the National Security Council for the required pre-publication review process.

Based on an initial review of the man manuscript by NCS staff, the US government concluded and told Bolton that the initial manuscript contained significant amounts of highly classified information AND THAT NO WAY, DUDE. Uh on or about June 23rd, 2020, Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, was published and became readily available to the public. None of the classified national defense information charged in counts 1 through 18 was published in Bolton’s book. However, there we don’t know exactly whether this was the classified intelligence they’re charging over that that was what was in Bolton’s book or it’s a totally different set. Uh there was a thousand pages. They might have been able to come up with a thousand charges.

At some point it’s overkill. So you just go what you got. So, we’re not sure which of the offending classified intelligence we’re referring to here. It’s just over a dozen you’re talking about a lot. It’s a problem. So, Biden becomes president and honor about June 16th, 2021, the US and Bolton entered a settlement agreement resolving civil li civil litigation relating to Bolton’s book. As a condition of that settlement, Bolton agreed to provide the US all materials in his possession that may contain any classified information. Well, and he didn’t, now did he? Uh, it’s very interesting. Check the timing. So, he he settles out with the US government June 16th, 2021. Then on or about July 6th, 2021, a representative for Bolton contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation via email to alert the FBI that an entity believed by Bolton’s representative to be Iran had obtained unauthorized access to one of his personal email accounts.

Um, yeah. Oops. That is the risk of using AOL and Google and Gmail and all that stuff. Um, honor about July 28th, 2021. Bolton’s representative emailed the FBI again to report report that Bolton and his representative had received the following email, which the representative believed was associated with the hack of Bolton’s account. I do not think I do not think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content, especially after the recent quiddle. This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side. Contact me before it’s too late. So, whoever got a hold of Bolton’s emails was apparently shaking him down, which is of course why you don’t use commercial consumer grade emails for top secret intelligence.

It’s why we don’t do that because other spies get a hold of it and then they can shake you down for the rest of your intelligence that you have or know about or could point them to so that you don’t go to prison. See, it’s all very thoughtful how this all works. Uh so they like, “Oh, we better call the FBI since we’re being shaken down for uh all the thousand pages of classified that we put out, you know, over MySpace or whatever they did.” Um and on and on it goes. August 22nd, 2025, finally the FBI raids Bolton’s house and they find all the stuff. They find all the top secret classified information. They get all the devices and the news tries to make it seem like this guy was just sitting there just a normal American and the bad Trump FBI just came in and raided his house for no reason.

But as you can see, this guy was committing thousands of acts of espionage for years and that was still going on. Every time you have as much as a post-it note that has classified intelligence on it in your house where it’s not supposed to be, you’re committing espionage essentially. So, this guy was committing these crimes all the way up until the point the FBI finally broke in and and just took a took a final accounting of all the the bad acts he’s been doing with this information. Oh, and they really rub it in here on his public statements of handling classified. So Trump is back in office now and and Bolton has been going around in the media for years talking about Hillary’s emails and talking about uh the signal messaging group that Hegs Seth and Tulsi Gabbard and them were all up to.

He was running his mouth in media and talking about how you’d go to prison if you screwed around like this and you mishandled classified or you let people know about our our country’s uh most most important secrets and they give lots of lots of juicy verbatim quotes so that future juries will know that this guy knew exactly what he’s talking about. He knew this was illegal and he did it anyway. Honor about March 31st in 1st 2025 in a media interview, Bolton stated in response to questions about something something the non-governmental messaging application, “I just can’t even imagine opening a Signal chat group or a Telegram chat group or anything else.” Okay, dude. I’m totally without words.

I I I couldn’t find a way to express how stunned I was that anybody would do this. You simply don’t use commercial means of communication, whether it’s supposedly an encrypted app or not, for these kinds of discussions. All right, let’s get it on. Charges 1 through eight, transmission of national defense information, violation of the Espionage Act. John Bolton lawfully having possession. So, he had lawful possession. He w he he was national security adviser. He just did a bunch of stuff with it. not supposed to do, giving it to people who didn’t have the right, you know, like his wife and kid. [snorts] Count one, approximate data transmission, September 23rd, 2018. Document A reveals intelligence about future attack by adversarial group in another country.

And that is marked with SI uh sensitive intelligence. So, we got it by the NSA. Uh, redacted, that’s probably the code word for the program that, uh, they used in order to, uh, collect the intelligence. And N O F O R N, no foreign means no foreign eyes. It means not even the Canadians, not even our friends in Britain. Uh, it’s just for Americans means it’s very sensitive. Count three, January 13th, 2019. Document C, reveals intelligence that foreign adversary was planning a missile launch in the future. Um, HCS that means we got it from the CIA most likely. Uh, sensitive sources and methods used to collect human intelligence. Document D reveals intelligence about an adversar’s knowledge of planned US actions.

So, we’re we’re doing espionage on their ability to do espionage on on us. And it involved uh involved sensitive intelligence and human sources. So probably a mix of NSA and CIA and it’s related to the USA and Great Britain. So it’s also UK intelligence that is compromised here. Who knows what that was? Let’s see those one. That’s charges 1 through 8. And then 9 through 18, retention of national defense uh information. uh probably uh when he no longer had uh an authorized possession but continued to have stuff documents AV2 reveals intelligence about a future attack by adversarial group in another country that’s SI probably NSA reveals liaison partners sharing sensitive information with the US intelligence community like is that South Korea is it Japan is it Armenia is it Greece or Albania We don’t know.

Um, you know, sensitive sources, uh, human sources, all of this really bad stuff. Covert action programs, Orcon is originator controlled, no foreign eyes, revealing intelligence on an adversaries later. The point is, doinder, it’s bad. It’s all very bad. Notice of forfeite. Yeah, you made a million dollars from this. We want the million dollars. That’s [snorts] pretty reasonable. and a true bill signed, handed down 18USC 793, the Espionage Act, ask for it by name. So you you see what I mean? It’s it’s pretty bad. Bolton had his wife and his daughter taking classified intelligence every single day for over a year so that he could immediately get it out into a book about Donald Trump misbehaving just as they were dropping all this stuff uh before House Intelligence about Trump supposedly shaking down Ukraine.

sort of the implication being at the behest of Vladimir Putin, right? Um the the Mueller investigation during that time period was coming to a close and it was not going to implicate Donald Trump and anything that he could be charged with. Paul Maniffort, sure. Did it did it reveal the relationship between some actors in the GOP and Russian intelligence officer Constantine Kimnik? Absolutely. uh you know, did it uh did eventually get at uh Roger Stone for messing around with Wikileaks? Yes, it did. There were a bunch of people that were implicated. None of them were Donald Trump. So, he was likely to run for reelection there. And this time, he might have another crack at the presidency without the taint of the Mueller stuff over the top of him.

And then you have some people from within the National Security Council who are starting to report about, oh, he had this call with the new president of Ukraine, the, you know, that he was shaking him down. I’m going to need something from you. And now Trump calls it a perfect call. Now, who’s in the chair as national security adviser is Bolton the whole time. And he’s writing a book the whole time. And one gets the sense that Bolton, who had, you know, strangely had luck with his clients and mek, the Iranian terrorist group, had luck while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. That’s kind of weird, right? He really didn’t see eye to eye with Trump much. Trump was a, you know, whatever you want to say, Trump is not a neoconservative.

Uh, he’s not a neoliberal, certainly along Hillary Clinton’s line either. Uh, so Bolton really didn’t have much in common with them. So, it almost seems like Bolton was working for him under false pretenses, intended to rat him out, was writing a book the entire time alongside his wife and daughter who had no reason to have our nation’s uh top secrets that were derived from the NSA and CIA. Uh, thank you. No, not allowed to do that. And yet he was with Simon Schuster going along with the publication of his book, paying him a million dollars. By the way, if you drop a million dollars on the National Security Adviser to hand you a bunch of documents that are derived from the NSA and the CIA, that’s not publishing.

That’s not journalism. That’s espionage. And you go to prison for it. So, it’s not clear to me why there are so few people indicted for this. This is really bad. I don’t care if he didn’t like Trump. I don’t care if he loved Trump. I don’t care who it is. Tell me that you think that you should be able to walk into the White House and walk out under your arm with all the secrets you can find and distribute distribute it to your family members. I want you to think about your five least responsible, dumbest family members and think about handing them the nuclear launch codes. You think about the dumbest people you’re going to see at Thanksgiving this year and you tell me whether you trust them with the nuclear launch codes.

Hell, I don’t even trust me the nuclear launch codes, much less the people at Thanksgiving. You know what I’m talking about. And frankly, some of you know who I’m talking about. Anyhow, this is bad. The point is, do Pender, it’s bad. So, that’s it for all of you who are watching the the mustache of fate there, John Bolton. for everybody looking at John Bolton with some sense of sympathy that like he’s getting charged because uh Trump doesn’t like him. Maybe Trump doesn’t like him. Maybe Trump has a reason not to like him. This is not good. And I think it’s good that we are charging this guy with a crime. And we should charge everybody that tries to write a book this way with the exact same crime.

So, what do you think? Do you think John Bolton’s getting a raw deal? Leave me a comment. Uh do do you would you like to name your five uh least responsible family members that you’re going to see at Thanksgiving and that you don’t want to hand nuclear launch codes to? Probably don’t put that in the comment or do if you’re feeling salty. Uh hit like, hit subscribe. Thanks for spending this time with me. Take care.