Intel community can’t find documents Trump wants to use to go after ex-adviser

President Donald Trump wants to prosecute his former national security adviser, John Bolton, by claiming he illegally published classified documents — but his own lawyers just admitted they have no evidence of this.

“[Seven] months after DOJ charged former Trump Natsec Adviser John Bolton with illegally retaining/sharing classified info, the intelligence community has yet to determine classification of much info seized from him,” Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported on Bluesky on Monday.

In the court document that Gerstein cited, Trump’s lawyers admitted that they need an extension to attempt their prosecution of Bolton because they are reviewing such a massive tranche of documents that they logistically cannot review all of them by the previous deadline. Because prosecutors usually press charges when they already have evidence, instead of requesting documents and then fishing for them, the request suggests that Trump’s prosecutors do not have a firm idea already of what crimes — if any — they are alleging they can prove Bolton committed.

“Once the agencies complete the classification review of a diary-like entry, they then analyze whether classified information in the entry can be disclosed to the defendant and cleared defense counsel in classified discovery, or whether the government should seek a protective order authorizing the government to redact or provide summary substitutions in lieu of that information under CIPA § 4,” explained the request for extension signed by United States Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, who was appointed by President Trump last year. “The process of devising suitable proposed redactions and substitutions is especially resource- and time-consuming given the nature of the diary-like entries. Whereas redacting an especially sensitive name or phrase in a single paragraph standing alone might ordinarily be sufficient to protect the national security interests at issue, the lengthy diary-like entries here often contain surrounding context that could otherwise reveal the classified information.”

The statement added, “As a result, the process of devising suitable proposed redactions and substitutions is an iterative process entailing proposals, discussions with relevant agency personnel, revisions, and further discussions.”

Bolton was accused by Trump of misusing documents from his first term to write a book “The Room Where It Happened” in which Bolton accused Trump of executing foreign policy solely with an eye toward his own political and personal advantages. Trump, in turn, tried to suppress the book’s publication by claiming Bolton relied on classified information to write his firsthand accounts and critiques.

“The 18-count indictment contends that Bolton regularly sent more than 1,000 pages of ‘diary-like entries’ to two people ‘related’ to him while he was handling the nation’s most sensitive military, intelligence and diplomatic matters,” reported Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney in October. “Many of the messages contained information designated as classified up to the ‘Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information’ level, prosecutors allege. Federal prosecutors in Maryland secured the indictment from a grand jury, which met for about three hours to consider the case.”

Gerstein and Cheney also pointed out at the time that “the charges against Bolton come as Trump has pressured his Justice Department to pursue criminal indictments of his longtime political foes. Former FBI Director James Comey was charged in September with lying to Congress after Trump ousted a top federal prosecutor in Virginia who resisted bringing the case. And last week, the same office — now headed by Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan — charged another longtime Trump adversary, New York Attorney General Letitia James, with bank fraud. Trump has similarly pressured prosecutors to charge Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), another longtime nemesis, although no charges against him have been filed thus far.”

“For one magic moment, the eyes of the nation were on former National Security Adviser John Bolton,” wrote commentator Cody Fenwick for AlterNet in 2020 regarding Bolton’s then-upcoming book about working with Trump. “The impeachment of President Donald Trump was ongoing, and Bolton was known to have played a critical role behind the scenes of the Ukraine scheme at the heart of the proceedings' charges. Reports indicated that his potential testimony would be explosive.”

He added, “But Bolton refused to testify before the House of Representatives' impeachment hearing, later saying he was only willing to testify for the Senate. Yet the Republican Party that would ultimately acquit Trump in the Senate refused to call any witnesses, so Bolton's voice was never heard. At a critical moment in the nation's history, Bolton chose to withhold potentially vital information from the public and from the officials tasked with adjudicating the president's fitness to serve. Now that cowardice has come back to bite him.”

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