Bulwark Takes - Breaking: Trump’s Former National Security Adviser John Bolton Indicted

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller take on the indictment of former National Security Adviser John Bolton by a federal grand jury in Maryland. Bolton is accused of sharing classified information with his wife and daughter over email — a move that raises questions about selective justice and the politicization of law enforcement.

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Big color, bigger savings. It's Sherwin Williams' biggest super sale. Get 40% off paints and stains October 17th through the 27th, with prices starting at 2939. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only, some exclusions apply. See Store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullwork. And I'm joined by Tim Miller, and we have some breaking news. Breaking but not unexpected. This afternoon on Thursday, John Bolton, Don Trump's former national security advisor, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland. This is being reported by a number of different outlets. It is for allegedly sharing what is being described as, quote, highly classified information with his wife and daughter over email. This is according to sources. on scene and now Tim before email hygiene practices are now very important to the Trump administration again you don't want to share anything

not over email not over signal no I'm going to say if you do it over signal you're fine obviously a fun little antif we get into the serious part of it it's apparently

it was in an AOL email account not surprised are you surprised Bolton's still on the AOL email account no I'm not surprised at all there's like there's like 20 of them out there they're all of a certain age and genre. So, yeah, I'm not surprised at Jemboldens, him and like David Axelrod.

Look, I will just say this. It used to be that a story like this would have caused five alarm fire. It's a clear indictment of a presidential opponent, someone who Trump has targeted nonstop. But this is now the third following James Comey and Letitia James, and it feels almost mundane, honestly, which to me is maybe the most shocking element of it, is that it's just part of our existence now. In this first swath of people they've targeted, we've talked about this. Like they, it does feel intentional. They win after people who don't have huge

constituencies. Obviously, John Bolton and Jim Comey in particular don't have huge fan bases anywhere in the country. It's you. You and Bill? I'm right here. Even John Bolton, not really even my cup of tea, to be honest. So Jim Comey though, I do. I do. I do like, I am charmed by Jim Comey. Made a bad mistake in the fall of 2016, but there for the grace of God, go all of us. Why do we need to relive that? Let he has not made a mistake, throw the first stone.

So, you know, look, he targets these folks. This stuff is obviously varying degrees of tickety-tack. I will see the details about what Bolton did. It's hard to imagine that the classified information that's in these emails to his wife and daughter

contain things that are more serious than, say, the classified documents or in Donald Trump's bathroom at Mar-a-Lago where people are kind of walking in and out of Mar-a-Lago. There are Chinese operatives that are members of Mar-a-Lago. There are cougars down there that have access to the bathroom. Donald Trump sexually assaulted people allegedly in some of those bathrooms. So, like, you know, a lot of people coming in and out of the bathrooms that had the classified documents in them in a country club. So, you know, I mean, it's hard to take seriously the fact that the DOJ thought that this was a real threat to national security

and that they needed to do it right before the statute of limitations dropped out. Like, it is obviously a targeting of his foes. It's extremely chilling. You said maybe it feels mundane. And I guess there is, I feel that. Like, the other thing I feel, though, is that, like, it just feels like we're in a banana republic. It feels like we're in a banana republic.

And I think that the thing that really is unfortunate about all of it is, I think that now, like an average person in the country feels that way. Because it's hard for them to kind of navigate through all the details and the legal details of all this stuff and all the Trump indictments and investigations. And, like, the fact that we put a criminal. fraud in the presidency that he tried an insurrection and that he was not he was not impeached and convicted was the original sin here because it led to all of this other fallout where Donald Trump is being investigated now he's counter investigating and like it's just it feels like

something that's happening in a in a developing democracy or collapsing one I guess I totally agree with that it is it is true that the de facto defense if you say, hey, this seems way unethical in a complete politicization of law enforcement. The sort of defense you're always going to get is, well, they went after him. They went after him. He's just, you know, tables turned. I voted for this. Shoe on the other foot, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

And I think at some point, I mean, it's hard to make this point, but it's like, no, these are not equal, these are not equal things, right? Like hoarding classified documents in Mar-a-Lago, in your bathroom, and then actively trying to hide them. from the government, which went to you and said, hey, you might have classified documents, bring them back. They weren't even going after you. But you were like, no, no, no. And then hiding and concealing those documents is of a wholly different, like, level than what has been alleged, at least according to these reports, with respect to Bolton. And, you know, the time is conspicuous and all that. And then, you know, actively saying, hey, Pam, go after these people.

and then having your attorney general go after these people is of a wholly different level then letting your Justice Department operate with independence and they uncover stuff that they have to go after. And I just think we're in such a bad place here because everything's getting muddied. And yeah, and also I guess I am worried about

a lot of like kind of casual political observers who just look at this and are like, wow, I guess this is just how it is and like, you know, man, I guess everyone's just going to go after their opponents. Yeah. In the morning newsletter this morning, Will Salatin had the speech from Jack Smith at George Mason. I mean, what he says is all obvious, but it is interesting coming from him and somebody that was taking a serious investigation into the president for his attempt to overturn our democracy. And, you know, and he says about Comey that the career prosecutor said this wasn't a case.

They brought someone in who's never been a prosecutor to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended. he talked with the Eric Adams thing, which we stopped talking about, which is kind of the other side of this. You're targeting your opponents, and then you're giving, you know, penance, you know, you're giving a jail-free card to anybody that is on your side. So he says about Eric Adams, I've been doing this 30 years. I've never heard of such a thing is what is what Jack Smith said about that. Well, he also said, he also talked about the signal thing, right? Like, he was like, if that ever happened in any other justice department, like, you would automatically open an investigation into how Pete Hegseth and all these people are on single talking about war plans, but they didn't.

At the final point that Salatin gets into is where Smith talks about, it's kind of the long-term ramifications of this, where he says, if you wanted to erode the rule of law, what you do is you get rid of nonpartisan apolitical prosecutors. Yeah. And that's like what's happening here. They're getting rid of prosecutors that won't do this. Hacks are self-selecting in. And, you know, we'll see.

Grand juries, we've talked with this a bunch. I do it's very easy to get a grand jury indictment. rules are just stacked towards the government. So we'll see if any of these cases go anywhere. Well, that's the last, isn't there the last guardrail, right? No. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Like, if they, that's it. Like, if they go anywhere, then we're in trouble. If the courts say, this looks so tough. Thanks at the last guardrail is kind of our fellow Americans, 12 Americans in a jury box. Does that, do, do you feel the West Wing music coming in now, Sam? No, well, I got too much. I have JVL on one shoulder being like, how can we trust our fellow citizens when they would. But yes, maybe there was hope for autism. The other part of that newsletter was

from Bill. So the newsletter this morning was like exceptionally long, like 3,000 words. Sign up for it now at the bulwark.com. If you're in the market for an exceptionally long morning newsletter, that's great. Great. Yeah, this one, if you read it, it brought you into the mid-morning. Timothy Snyder, who was talking about just, you know, the creeping authoritarianism, which really isn't that creeping. And I just want to read some of that kind of stayed with me. He was talking about the takeover institutions. They said, on the institutions, it strikes me that they're going really quickly. And the thing that they're trying to establish is something like a party state. So it's not that the state is going away. The state is becoming secondary to some other project, which is what, of course,

the fascist and the communists had in common. They didn't do away with the state, but the state was secondary to a movement, as they called it, or a party. So the state functioned, but the party was on top of it. The party ran through it. The worrying thing for me is that today is a little bit different from the prior cases, because those actually went more slowly. And it got me thinking, it's like, yeah, we're like nine to ten months in. And this is all like fast. One more thing. Wait, one more thing before I go, unless you have thoughts on Timothy Snyder.

No, I had one more thing on Bolton. So you go on. Okay. Well, this is totally unrelated to Bolton. So you go to Bolton, then I'll give you my answer. I was just going to say, again, I think a lot of John Bolton's foreign policy was downright crazy and irresponsible. And there were a bunch of stuff that he did that I didn't like.

But, you know, there's something to be said for the fact about how few of them there are of people from that first administration that are speaking out right now, which is kind of, a lot of them are in hiding. Ty Cobb? Yeah, Ty Cobb. My man, it was good to have him on the potter away this week. And what he's, what he talked about is steel balls. I appreciated that from Todd Cobb. But, man, a lot of folks are in hiding. A lot of folks have decided to throw in the towel and go in with him.

You know, this is, it sucks for Bolton and like his family, his wife, they're going to go through this and lawyers and all that. So even if he does get acquitted, this is something that is totally uncalled for and and just a gangster type government that we should not be in any way like letting the country slide towards. No, it's really bad. Unrelated. Although I guess you can make a relation about sort of the banana republic element of this. I know you've been following the issues of the Pentagon Press Corps and how they just not were signing this stuff. Did you see they reported on the outlets that did, in fact, sign the pledge?

As of the last, I saw it was one American news and the Federalist. Is that an update? I'm going to go. I'm going to read you. There's about 15 or said. This is the Federalist, Epic Times. Oh, the Epiq Times, which is the Chinese dissident property on the website. O-A-N, so congrats to Matt Gates.

Here's where it gets really funny. The Turkish newspaper, Aksum, three individuals from the Turkish state-run Anaddulo agency, two Turkish freelancers. God, we have so many Turkish people in the fucking Pentagon Press Corps now, a reporter for the Australian, which is an Australian news outlet, an Afghan freelancer and three lesser-known operations, AWPS News, the Indian Globe, the India Globe, and a blog called Journal Korea. So that's the Pentagon Press Corps now.

This is the in-house Pentagon Press Corps. Imagine if you're the Journal Korea blogger now who just gets the first question every day at the brief. Mr. X. Who else is going to call on? I, you know, you can only call on OAN so many times. Congrats to the Journal of Korea. This is failed stage shit. It's like comically failed stage shit.

It's like Veepe failed stage shit. Oh my God. How much Turkish cover? How many Turkish questions is the fucking. Big year for Turkey. I will say. I mean, Erdogan. They orchestrated the coup in Syria, but basically.

So they got a scalp there. And now they're basically, you know, the paper of record for the American Defense Department. Yeah. You know, this is a great assignment for Max Tani. I'm going to call them up and say. You've got to do a piece on Turkey's time in the U.S. Press. All right, buddy. Keep up the good spirits.

I'm doing my best. All right. Subscribe to the feet, everybody. Talk to you. See you soon. Later. Big color, bigger savings. It's Sherwin Williams' biggest super sale.

Get 40% off paints and stains October 17th through the 27th, with prices starting at 2939. Whether you're refreshing your interior. or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-William's store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only, some exclusions apply. See, Store for Details. Delivery available on qualifying orders.