🔗 Share this article

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to see critics probed, exerting pressure on the Justice Department to charge former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

"We can't delay any longer, it's damaging our standing and trustworthiness," the president stated last month in a social media post.

"I was impeached me, and indicted me (five times!)" he said, referencing the four criminal cases he faced after departing the White House in 2021 and James's lawsuit.

Each have since been indicted, in situations that many experts have stated appear to be driven by politics and challenging to win in court.

But the most recent charges against a presidential opponent, former security advisor John Bolton, stand apart, legal specialists and former prosecutors say.

"I would say, contrasting Bolton's charges to James' is like comparing two different things," said Mark Lesko, a former acting US attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

This Details of Bolton's Legal Situation

Bolton has been formally charged on national allegations pertaining to the supposed mishandling of sensitive materials. Since leaving the White House in 2019, he has become a vocal presidential opponent, going so far as to call him "stunningly uninformed" and unsuitable for the presidency in his book.

Experts say that while there may be political reasons to go after Bolton, the procedures used to secure an indictment and the proof gathered against him indicate a potentially stronger legal argument than the DOJ presented against James.

"These actions that's being alleged is both more severe and appears to have occurred over a significant period of time," said Carissa Byrne Hessick, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Throughout his time as Trump's security advisor, and after his 2019 White House departure, authorities claimed that Bolton put the nation at risk by improperly retaining and sending sensitive documents to family members using unprotected methods, including AOL. Some of the documents were labeled highly classified.

The charge alleges that at a certain time a unauthorized user gained access to Bolton's system where files were stored and transmitted an seeming threat to cause "the biggest scandal since Hillary [Clinton]'s emails were released".

Bolton pleaded not guilty during a court appearance on recently to 18 separate counts of improperly handling classified information.

Retribution or a Substantial Legal Argument?

The timing of his charge - arriving on the tails of allegations against Comey - has revived concerns about external influence on the justice system.

Trump once implied Bolton should be in jail, and called him a "sleazebag". Bolton, for his part, wrote a book about his time in the Trump administration that was sharply negative of the leader.

"There's no question that the schedule of this indictment, when combined with additional cases, has prompted questions about the strength of these charges, and the reason these charges are being brought at this time," said Jamil Jaffer, creator and executive director of the National Security Institute.

Nevertheless, he continued, "if the Justice Department is able to demonstrate the allegations stated and demonstrate the material is correctly designated, his behavior may very well have broken the statute".

Charging such a senior figure for mishandling classified documents is "uncommon" but not without precedent, said Carrie Cordero, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

"Cases that involve sensitive materials pose difficulties to prosecute, but they can and are filed against equally junior and high-level officials, from occasionally," she said.

Parallels to Investigations into Trump and President

Trump similarly encountered allegations of wrongfully keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and obstructing their recovery, but that matter was ultimately thrown out by a court official and voided by his re-election as leader.

A special counsel also found that former President Joe Biden wrongfully maintained sensitive materials from his time as second-in-command, but did not prosecute him.

Bolton's situation shares characteristics to Biden's sensitive materials matters, said Mr Lesko, who also held a senior security role at the Justice Department.

Strict procedures regulate the handling of sensitive materials. To secure a guilty verdict, the government must demonstrate that Bolton was aware the material he was sending was classified, and he had to intentionally transfer it to someone without authorization to receive it.

"Due to the sensitive nature of the information at issue in this matter, we don't have a lot of details about the reasons the government believes things like the diary entries and the other material he shared by email, and the reason there were restricted," said Mr Jaffer.

A More Traditional Prosecution

The process by which the Justice Department initiated this legal action will be closely examined, following Trump openly posted his desire to see his critics prosecuted and some of those charges came to fruition.

But Mr Lesko said in Bolton's situation, authorities appear to have followed standard procedure.

"The Bolton case and eventually the indictment seemed to have observed the standard procedure including the regulations and standards within the DOJ," he said.

Unlike Comey's short, two-page charge, Bolton's was a increasingly "traditional" filing that "explicitly sets forth the particulars involving the circumstances and circumstances here," Mr Lesko said.

"It appears fairly consistent with a long line of precedents... where public servants mishandled and shared sensitive information."