At the center of the Justice Department’s reopened probe of John Bolton is whether President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, and more recently staunch critic, broke the law when he shared what Trump administration officials believe was classified information with people not authorized to have it.
A 2020 criminal investigation into Bolton originated from allegations that Bolton had shared portions of his book draft with people not authorized to handle sensitive information before he obtained final approval from the government that is required ahead of publishing any book, according to a person briefed on the probe.
The FBI obtained emails that appeared to show Bolton was working on his book manuscript while still at the White House, and that he was sharing early portions with his representatives who were helping to get it published, according to the person.
The early manuscript portions included material that was restricted by federal law governing classified documents, the person said.
CNN has reached out to Bolton and his attorney for comment on the FBI emails.
Early in the Biden administration, federal prosecutors decided to abandon the criminal probe, and dismissed a separate civil lawsuit, bringing no charges. What’s not clear for now is whether investigators have found new information to prompt the new investigation and whether they have any evidence to sustain possible charges.
The specter of political interference hung over the Bolton probe in part because of well-publicized antipathy between Bolton and Trump, and because evidence introduced in the civil case showed that career officials at the White House who oversaw the pre-publication review process for Bolton’s book had signaled they intended to approve publication before political appointees intervened to stop final approval.
That Bolton didn’t receive final approval before deciding to move forward with publication was at the crux of the legal dispute in court. Bolton and other national security officials in the federal government are required to submit manuscripts for pre-publication review to prevent the disclosure of classified details in their memoirs.
After he left the White House, Bolton found a publisher for the book, then used his private attorney to submit his manuscript to a review by the National Security Council.
His attorney, Charles Cooper, initially maintained to the national security review team, according to the court record, that Bolton didn’t believe he needed the prepublication review because he didn’t believe he had classified information in the manuscript. But the government’s reviewing team disagreed and worked with him to edit the manuscript, without ever confirming in writing he was authorized to publish, court filings say.
Two days before the book was printed and distributed to retail stores and book reviewers, a National Security Council lawyer told Bolton’s attorney the manuscript still had classified information in it.
The Justice Department went to court seeking to block the publication – at the time, considered an extraordinary step. But a federal judge in Washington, DC, refused to do so because of Bolton’s First Amendment protections, and especially because the book sellers already had the manuscript in hand.
“Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreements,” Judge Royce Lamberth of the DC District Court wrote at the time. “The government sufficiently alleges that Bolton disclosed information without confirming that the information was unclassified … Even if Bolton operated out of an abundance of caution in submitting his manuscript for review, the very existence of his caution leads to a fair inference that Bolton was less than certain as to the status of the manuscript. “
The Biden administration dropped the lawsuit before Lamberth was able to fully weigh the facts of the case.
A criminal grand jury investigation resulted in no charges and was closed during the early months of the Biden administration.
At the time the cases were dropped, Bolton’s attorney said the Biden administration had “tacitly acknowledged that President Trump and his White House officials acted illegitimately.”
The book, released in June 2020, boasted a series of shocking allegations, including that Trump requested Chinese help to win the 2020 presidential election, had argued Venezuela is part of the US, had casually offered to intervene in the criminal justice system for foreign leaders and that his own senior officials mocked him behind his back.
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