A federal grand jury indicted former Trump national security adviser John Bolton Thursday on 18 counts of illegally hoarding or sending sensitive information — leaving the longtime pillar of the Republican foreign policy establishment facing decades in prison.

The indictment in Greenbelt, Md., federal court alleges that Bolton sent sensitive national security documents through a personal AOL email account and knowingly transmitted materials to outside contacts while serving in the first Trump administration.

The indictment alleges that Bolton, 76, used email and various messaging apps to send documents classified as high as “top secret” that revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries and international relations.

At least some of the communications on his AOL account were exposed when a bad actor believed to have been linked to Iran hacked Bolton’s email, according to the indictment.

Link to the article.

Personally? I always thought the guy was a bit of a doofus. Seemed to be walking around in circles. Probably just me, though.

Edit - AOL account?! Just wow.

[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 10-16-2025).]

I honestly just do not understand the lack of respect for classified information. The ONLY person in the United States that has the authority to be willy-nilly about classified material, is the President of the United States. That's because "HE" owns it, not Congress, not the Judicial branch, but the President of the United States. If the President wished to print it out and hand out classified documents at Walmart, he absolutely has the authority to do so... because he is the ultimate consumer of that information.

But no one else, not even the Vice President has any authority to violate the rules governing the handling of classified information. Taking these documents home is totally insane to me. As an employee, I could put things in a courier bag, and no police officer, TSA, or any Federal official other than senior officials from my own agency could look in the courier bag. And here's a guy sending it to friends and family on his AOL account?

This is the problem with political appointees... they don't have to have a polygraph, they don't have to go through a psychiatric evaluation, they don't even have to have a background investigation. Contractors also don't have to have a psych eval, and they don't even go through a full-scope poly, just a basic polygraph.

quote Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: ... This is the problem with political appointees... they don't have to have a polygraph, they don't have to go through a psychiatric evaluation, they don't even have to have a background investigation. Contractors also don't have to have a psych eval, and they don't even go through a full-scope poly, just a basic polygraph.

Hell... when I was working at the power company, doing stuff that could affect the grid, most everyone in my group had to jump through all kinds of hoops, to obtain the necessary security clearances.
Of course they did a criminal background check. They did a 100(?) question psych test, in which they frequently asked the same question at least three different ways, etc, etc, etc.
They did lots of other stuff too. I don't remember it all - I've slept since then. I don't recall them doing a polygraph, but they did snip hair samples for analysis, to ensure that we hadn't consumed anything illegal for as long as we had been growing that hair.
I thought about shaving my head, just to pizz them off.

When I retired I remember seeing a long list of emails. One for each Windows server "group" that I had been de-enrolled from. I have to believe that it hasn't gotten any more relaxed, since then.
Although, I'm pretty sure, a lot of people relaxed because I wasn't around any longer.

quote Originally posted by Raydar: Hell... when I was working at the power company, doing stuff that could affect the grid, most everyone in my group had to jump through all kinds of hoops, to obtain the necessary security clearances. Of course they did a criminal background check. They did a 100(?) question psych test, in which they frequently asked the same question at least three different ways, etc, etc, etc.

OMG, yes... haha...

"Does your back pain affect your day to day life? Yes or No" ... uh, I don't have back pain?
"Does your back pain affect your family and relationships? Yes or No" ... how do you answer this? I don't have back pain, haha...

Same thing for drugs.

And then I remember... "Do you like flowers, yes or no?" I mean... **** , how do you answer that? Yes... but it's not like in my top 10 things in life.

"Do you want to be a florist? Yes or No" ... NOPE!

"Have you ever thought of being a Park Ranger?" Oh **** ... I do now!

quote Originally posted by Raydar:When I retired ...

I'm so jealous... I mean that! But yeah, I bet... and especially I'd imagine the line workers, and all the stuff you guys would do with critical infrastructure. You get a bad apple in that group and it can take down the entire grid and cause chaos. We know with what happened in Katrina what results from power / water shutting down.

Have you ever planned or participated in a government take over.

Was one of the security questions.
Took 4 months to get the clearance because they shut the government down. (not this one)

It's only a security issue if you can't afford a good attorney.

quote Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: I'm so jealous... I mean that! But yeah, I bet... and especially I'd imagine the line workers, and all the stuff you guys would do with critical infrastructure. You get a bad apple in that group and it can take down the entire grid and cause chaos. We know with what happened in Katrina what results from power / water shutting down.

When we started worrying about internet security, as it pertained to the grid, it was almost amusing.
Sure, an intruder could just take routers offline, and stuff like that. I suspect that sort of thing is in everyone's "tool kit".
But in order to do really malicious stuff to the grid, you would have to understand the SCADA protocol (which was written in-house) and you'd also have to understand the architecture of what it was you were trying to sabotage. Every single electric substation is/was a "one-off". There were similarities, of course, but no two were alike.

My point being... the persons capable of doing the most damage, and knowing what they were doing, were insiders. Disgruntled - present or former - employees, or similar.
It took them almost ten years to act upon that bit of thought. If memory serves, we still possibly had analog radio modems on some of out SCADA systems as recently as five years ago. (I quit using them, long before that, so I'm not exactly sure when they were "de-commed".)