FBI agents seized classified documents during the search of former national security adviser John Bolton’s downtown Washington, D.C., office last month, according to newly unsealed court records.
Materials were described as “secret” or “confidential” or “classified” during the search of Bolton’s office, The Washington Post reported.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia documents suggested the materials found at Bolton’s office included information referencing weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. mission to the United Nations and records related to the U.S. government’s strategic communications, Politico reported.
The inventory, filed earlier this month in federal court, was unsealed by a federal magistrate judge in Maryland.
The heading on at least one set of documents marked “confidential” was redacted, Politico reported.
“Law enforcement is actively reviewing evidence and interviewing witnesses,” prosecutors said in the filings, the Post reported.
According to an earlier unsealed search warrant affidavit, FBI agents believed they would find classified records in Bolton’s possession, in part, because of information they said they’d learned about a foreign adversary hacking into his AOL email account years ago, the Post reported.
Bolton’s office and Bethesda, Maryland, home were raided Aug. 22 as part of an investigation believed to be surrounding classified information Bolton was accused of illegally leaking in his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened,” the Washington Examiner reported.
The search warrants for Bolton’s home and office indicated FBI agents were seeking evidence related to three felony offenses, including gathering, transmitting, or losing national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act and retaining classified information without permission, Politico reported.
After serving in Trump’s first administration, Bolton became one of the president’s fiercest critics.
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, previously described an inventory of items seized from the diplomat’s house as “ordinary records of a 40-year career serving this country” when that list was unsealed this month, the Post reported.
While facing a lawsuit claiming he included classified information in a book he wrote after leaving the Trump administration, Bolton was warned by a federal judge that his actions might have been criminal.
The Biden administration’s Justice Department dropped the charges against Bolton in 2021.
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