A federal grand jury just moments ago indicting former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on 18 counts of illegally hoarding or sending sensitive national security information, leaving a longtime pillar of the Republican foreign policy establishment, basing decades in prison.
00:00:00.000Hello, everybody. I'm John Fawcett with this Great America Show midday update for Thursday, October 16th.
00:00:05.140A federal grand jury just moments ago indicting former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on 18 counts, folks.
00:00:13.66018 counts of illegally hoarding or sending sensitive national security information,
00:00:18.460leaving a longtime pillar of the Republican foreign policy establishment, basing decades in prison.
00:00:24.120The indictment in Greenbelt, Maryland, federal court alleges that Bolton sends sensitive national security documents
00:00:29.860through a personal AOL email account and knowingly transmitted materials to outside contacts while serving in the first Trump administration.
00:00:38.460Bolton, of course, 76 years old, served as President Trump's National Security Advisor from April of 2018 until his firing in September of 2019.
00:00:46.400Upon leaving office, he pledged he did not have any classified documents or notes in his possession.
00:00:52.460However, those communications, some of which stayed on his AOL account,
00:00:55.540were exposed to bad actors when a foreign entity hacked Bolton's email, according to a probable cause warrant, unsealed last month.
00:01:04.740Bolton faces up to 10 years in prison on each count in the indictment.
00:01:09.34010 times 18? Seems like 180 years to me, folks.
00:01:13.560Federal agents searched Bolton's Maryland home in Washington, D.C. office on August 22nd
00:01:17.920in connection with long-running investigation, which FBI sources told the New York Post was mysteriously shelved
00:01:24.460during the administration of President Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden.
00:01:29.440During those searches, FBI investigators retrieved documents related to weapons of mass destruction,
00:01:34.620U.S. mission to the United Nations, strategic government communications, and secret travel memos,
00:01:39.880according to the court-related documents.
00:01:41.720Now, even if Bolton had no intention of releasing the information,
00:01:45.380he could hell be liable for the sensitive documents that were left lying around where others could get to it.
00:01:51.640I mean, the man's email was hacked by a foreign entity.
00:01:55.380The wheels of justice, folks, finally, finally greased, oiled, and lubed, and finally working.
00:02:01.260The strange part about it all is John Bolton had so much to say when President Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was raided,
00:02:06.640and they were looking for classified documents that President Trump was able to declassify.
00:02:11.960Take a listen. Let's take a trip down memory lane of what Bolton had to say
00:02:15.360and how he was so quick to blame and accuse President Trump of wrongdoing
00:02:19.840when it turns out President Trump was, in fact, the only person who could have the classified documents
00:02:24.220because he could declassify them as president.
00:02:26.720Take a trip down memory lane with me, and let's listen to John Bolton after the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
00:02:30.960Any given moment. But I don't think he cared about the classification system.
00:02:35.920I don't think he appreciated the sensitivity of this information,
00:02:40.060and he didn't appreciate the sensitivity of how it was often acquired, the so-called sources and methods.
00:02:47.520So this had been briefed to him before I arrived. It was repeated frequently.
00:02:52.320I think it simply had no impact on him, whatever.
00:02:55.500There's a couple of different ways that people think about this,
00:02:58.720and people who are not friendly to the president who think about what's happened here.
00:03:01.740And one of them is Donald Trump master thief, criminal, running some kind of elaborate conspiracy
00:03:08.720to bring things out of the White House and keep them secret, potentially for political or financial gain.
00:03:14.300There are other people whose attitude is Trump is chaotic. He's careless. He's not that smart.
00:03:19.580He took these things almost by mistake, and now he's basically stamping his feet and saying,
00:03:24.120they're mine. I don't want to give them up.
00:03:25.520Give me a sense of where you think the truth lies with respect to Trump's intelligence,
00:03:32.100carelessness, and the degree to which he might have brought motive to bear on taking these documents
00:03:37.500out of the White House and keeping them for this long at Mar-a-Lago.
00:03:39.880Well, it's very hard to speculate on motive other than that he liked cool things.
00:03:46.680He saw things, so he wanted to take them, and he was pretty much able to take them,
00:03:52.320and not just on classified information matters, on all kinds of things that crossed his desk.
00:03:58.660Some days he liked to eat a lot of French fries. Some days he took classified documents.
00:04:02.680He wanted them. Why did he want them? Because he could get them.
00:04:05.480Now, President Trump happened to be holding a press conference just moments ago
00:04:08.960after the news that John Bolton had been indicted broke.
00:04:13.260Take a listen to what President Trump had to say about the indictment of his former employee.
00:04:19.340Just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland. Do you have a reaction to that?
00:04:22.260I didn't know that. You told me for the first time, but I think he's, you know, a bad person.
00:04:26.960I think he's a bad guy. Yeah, he's a bad guy. He's too bad, but that's the way it goes.
00:04:33.880That's the way it goes. That's the way it goes, right? That's the way it goes. Will I what?
00:04:37.460Have you reviewed the case against him? No, I haven't. I haven't. But I just think he's a bad person.