FBI agents uncovered classified documents while executing a search warrant at former national security adviser John Bolton’s office in Washington D.C. last month.
The search warrant was conducted amid the Justice Department’s probe into Bolton who faces an investigation into his handling of classified documents. The FBI was seeking evidence which shows that Bolton was in violation of three statutes which includes gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act and retaining classified information without permission. The August 22 raid occurred at both Bolton’s office and his Maryland home.
The FBI wrote in an from the raid that at Bolton’s office that agents uncovered documents labeled confidential about weapons of mass destruction, confidential documents related the federal government’s strategic communications, a travel memo labeled “secret”, and confidential documents related to the United States mission to the United Nation. The heading of one set of “confidential” documents was redacted from the inventory.
The federal government classifies its “classified documents” in three different categories: confidential, secret, and top secret. On that scale, “confidential” documents are deemed to have the least damaging impact to national security if released, and “top secret” information could have the most damaging impact.
Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell shared to Politico that the “confidential” and “secret documents” seized by the FBI were not from Bolton’s time in the first Trump administration, but rather stem back from Bolton’s work in previous administrations. Lowell also said that Bolton had previously been granted permission to the documents.
“These materials, many of which are documents that had been previously approved as part of a pre-publication review for Amb. Bolton’s book, were reviewed and closed years ago,” Lowell said in a statement.
“These are the kinds of ordinary records, many of which are 20 years old or more, that would be kept by a 40-year career official who served at the State Department, as an Assistant Attorney General, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and the National Security Advisor,” Lowell continued. “Specifically, the documents with classification markings from the period 1998-2006 date back to Amb. Bolton’s time in the George W. Bush Administration,” Lowell added. “An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton.”
Typically, documents will be labeled “declassified,” the FBI’s inventory does not specify if any of the documents possessed this label.
Bolton and President Donald Trump publicly battled following the publication of Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened” in which he accused Trump was image-obsessed and that he was “unfit” for presidential office. It was revealed that in Bolton’s original manuscript, it included classified information. The Justice Department under the Biden administration led a probe into Bolton, but it did not lead to criminal charges.
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