The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Bolton In Court, Zelenskyy In Washington, Military In The Caribbean

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

The Justice Department indicted former National Security Adviser John Bolton on charges related to mishandling classified information. Bolton was a vocal critic of President Trump, and his indictment comes on the heels of indictments of other Trump critics, James Comey and Letitia James. We discuss the case against Bolton as well as other major news in Washington this week. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political and editor correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Terry. Louise. After growing up on our mother's childhood stories from a time in Ireland, we're here in Galway for our first visit. This podcast was recorded at 1.20 p.m. on October 17th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll still be drinking in the wonderful music. Beautiful sights, inspiring history. And all the Ishqabaha we can get. Slantcha!

Enjoy the show. Wow. What are those words? Do you know those words? I don't know. I want some Ishqabaha. Sounds like a fun trip. I just want to Guinness. You know, it's Friday. I was going to say, yeah. That's what I was ready for. I know.

Apparently, Ishgabaha is water of life in Irish. Okay. Now you know. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles. Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the podcast, we are wrapping up another busy week in Washington, starting with the indictment this week of former national security advisor, John Bolton, which is why you are here, Ryan, you cover the Justice Department.

That's right. Can you talk us through just the basics of this indictment? What is Bolton charged with? What does the Justice Department say he did? So Bolton is facing 18 counts in all. Eight counts for the transmission of national defense information, the remaining 10 for the retention of national defense information. And what the indictment says is that when Bolton served as President Trump's national security advisor during the first term, so in 2018, 2019, that Bolton would often take handwritten notes on yellow notepads about his daily activities. So meetings that he'd have with U.S. intelligence officials or with military officials, meetings that he would have with foreign leaders or foreign intelligence services. So we take notes on those. And the indictment says

that he would then type up these diary-like entries on a regular basis into an electronic form. material that included classified information and then send those diary-like entries via a commercial messaging app and his AOL and Gmail accounts to two family members, family members who had no security clearances. In total, the indictment says Bolton sent more than a thousand pages of information. And in those thousand pages, there was, the indictment says, highly classified information. What kind of evidence does the Justice Department say they have for all of this criminal activity? Well, look, this is a 26-page. indictment. It's not going to provide all the evidence that the Justice Department has, but it certainly has a lot of details in it. It provides examples of what it says is in some of these documents. It says one document, for example, reveals intelligence about foreign adversary plans to attack U.S. forces. A document reveals a covert action plan by the United States. Another document reveals human intelligence using sensitive sources and methods. This is like the crown jewels of what the U.S. spy agents.

do, a covert action program and intelligence collected on the leader of an adversary's military. So very sensitive information all told. You may recall that Bolton wrote a tell-all memoir from his time in the Trump White House. There was a fight back in the day about whether there was classified information in there or not. The Justice Department tried to sue him. Ultimately, the book was published. The indictment says that none of the classified information in the charged accounts appears in that book. There's one more thing that I'll mention from this indictment that's very interesting. And it is that after he left the Trump White House, Bolton's personal email at some point was hacked by people who the department believes have ties to the Iranian

government. And the indictment says that those hackers did gain access to the classified information that he was sending over his personal email. Got it. Well, I mean, what is Bolton saying about these charges? Has he made any public comments since the indictment came out? He'd put out a statement last night after he was indicted. And he is very much trying to frame this as part of Trump's vengeance campaign. Bolton said that he's a target by weaponized justice department that's going after those who Trump deems his enemies with charges that Bolton says, quote, were declined before or distort the facts. And quote, he says that this is just an effort by the Trump administration to intimidate Trump's opponents. And he says he looks forward to this legal fight to defending

what he calls his lawful conduct and exposing what he says is Trump's abuse of power. Well, I feel like it's time to bring up the sort of elephant in the room, which is that Bolton has been very critical of President Trump since he left the first Trump administration. We can just hear a little bit of what Trump had to say about this indictment yesterday. I think he's a bad guy. Yeah, he's a bad guy. It's too bad, but it's the way it goes. That's the way it goes, right? Domenico, can you remind us a little bit more of the history between these two? Well, you know, Bolton was somebody who appeared a lot on Fox News, was known as a pretty hawkish member of the sort of right-wing foreign policy community, someone that Trump saw a lot. He brought Bolton into his inner circle, made him as national security advisor during his first term. But they had a falling out. And Bolton went on to write a book about Trump.

Trump tried to block the release of that book. Trump wound up calling Bolton a boring old fool. And Bolton had revealed some things in his book that obviously. made Trump pretty upset. And, you know, look, there were a lot of people who were in Trump's inner circle in that first term who then wound up having a falling out because they disagreed with how Trump conducted himself in office. Well, then the obvious question, Ryan, is this indictment comes on the heels of indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who are also people who Trump perceives as enemies. How does this indictment against Bolton compare with those other indictments? Well, look, Trump obviously campaigned in 2024 on seeking vengeance against his perceived enemies. In the case of James Comey and Letitia James, Trump publicly called on the Justice Department to prosecute them. Shortly afterwards, they were charged.

Comey was charged with false statements to Congress. Lettia James was charged with bank fraud and false statements. We know that career prosecutors had serious doubts about the strength of the evidence in both of those cases. They were overruled by a new acting U.S. attorney who was put in place handpicked by President Trump. This woman, Lindsay Halligan, has no prosecutorial experience. She had once worked as a personal attorney for the president. That is all a very unusual process. That's not how these things normally go down.

That series of events fed concerns that this was about political retribution and not about the facts and the evidence of the case against them. With Bolton, this is a different U.S. attorney's office. It is led by a career prosecutor. They were working with the National Security Division at the Justice Department. This is the normal process for these sorts of things. I will also add that the investigation into John Bolton is a long-running investigation. It was underway, well underway during the Biden administration. So it's not something that just started after Trump came back to office.

And this is a 26-page indictment. The indictment against James Comey was a page and a half. The indictment against Letitia James was four pages and basically. another sentence. The indictment against Bolton is full of detailed allegations. So these are very significant differences between the case against Bolton and the indictments that we saw against Comey and Tish James. Ultimately, Bolton is going to have his day in court. He did plead not guilty in his initial appearance in court today in Maryland. We'll see how it plays out. You know, and I think Ryan has made this point before, but I think that this is why the independence

of the Department of Justice is so important because you want to have legitimacy behind these cases, political legitimacy. And as it is, a lot of people think that Trump has gone too far on his targeting and his retribution campaign of political foes. You know, a recent UGov poll, for example, found that six and ten people thought that Trump should not pursue charges against political foes. And a majority of people believed that he is, in fact, doing that. And, you know, in a case like this, that may not be something that's as seemingly clearly political as the James Comey case. or Letitia James, that can undermine the credibility of a case that may have some legitimacy. Well, we can leave it there for now.

Ryan, thank you so much for your reporting. Thank you. All right, let's take a quick break, more in a moment. And we're back, and NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez is here with us. Hi, Franco. Hey, how are you? I'm good. So we are going to talk about a few different foreign affairs topics that have popped up this week.

I want to start with the news about the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is at the White House today. what are we expecting to come out of that visit? I mean, it is a big meeting. The two leaders are expected to talk about the U.S. providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, which Ukraine wants to use to fire deep into Russia. They've done a good job of kind of attacking Russia and kind of disrupting their economy. And Trump has actually been kind of warming to the idea. He's talked about it a few times. And Trump is also warming up to Zelensky in recent months. In Russian Vladimir Putin has kind of backed away from the negotiating table and kind of backed away from some

of the assurances that, you know, he gave Trump about, you know, meeting with Zelensky and kind of slowing down the attacks, or at least leading towards a potential peace deal. But Putin yesterday actually threw kind of a curveball into the mix. He had a call with Trump yesterday. And now Trump and Putin are going to meet in Budapest, Hungary. This will be after some high-level leaders meet next week to talk about a potential end of the war. So I can't imagine Zelensky is necessarily happy about that, considering that he wants these Tomahawk missiles. And I can only question whether Trump is going to want to provide more missiles if he has kind of this carrot of a potential piece in front of him that Putin just gave him. You know, I mean, Putin is one of those

people. You mentioned curve balls. It's like he throws, we're in the major league baseball playoffs here. And he throws a lot of secondary pitches, sliders, cutters, sinkers, screwballs, whatever it is to get other people off balance. Because, you know, President Trump puts a lot of faith in his personal relationships. And he's continued to say often that he has this great relationship with President Putin. And the reason why Trump, it seems, wants to like Putin is because Trump really respects absolute power. So he wants Putin's sort of friendship and respect and he wants Putin to go along with what he wants him to do. But as the world knows, people who've seen Putin for many years, this is somebody who does not exactly go along with what others want to have happen. And he's happy to tease and say he might go along with something and drag something out. And then nothing really winds up coming from it that's outside of what his end goals are. Well, Franco, it wasn't that long ago that President Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and there were big hopes coming out of that meeting that there was imminent peace or some big development coming in this conflict that didn't really happen. How does this moment compare to that meeting in August?

Yeah, I mean, I think it feels very similar. Clearly, I will say that the threat of arming Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles caught Russia's attention. Putin is coming back to the negotiating table, reaching out to Trump. So Trump's got some leverage. He's using it, and it seems like he's using it effectively. But as you kind of point out, the meeting in Alaska did not result in any significant steps towards peace. Despite all the high expectations, remember Trump had called for a ceasefire and said he'd be mad if there wasn't a ceasefire after the meeting. After the meeting, he talked about Putin and Zelensky meeting and getting together, which, you know, was a huge deal.

Lots of headlines. That didn't happen either. So while, of course, this meeting with Putin is a very, very big deal, I think it is going to come with some skepticism and questions about whether Putin is playing Trump because of what happened last time. Let's just remember that before he announced the Alaska meeting, Trump was supposed to, you know, slap Russia with more economic sanctions. So Putin, as kind of like Domenico was saying, with the curve balls and the slide balls, he knows what he's doing and he's coming to the table. or coming to at least the pitchers mound, you know, right at the last minute and making a difference. And at least Trump seems to be reacting. Well, I want to move to another part of the world now, Venezuela, where the United States' involvement there were getting more and more information seemingly every week.

The United States conducted a military strike on a fifth boat in the Caribbean of the administration. The Trump administration says was carrying drugs, though the administration has provided no evidence to support that claim. And Trump also confirmed this week that he had authorized a covert. CIA operation in Venezuela. Franco, get us up to speed here. What are experts that you've spoken to saying about the administration's actions there? Yeah, I mean, the experts that I'm talking to are questioning whether Trump is actually gearing up for some kind of military action in Venezuela and that this is looking less like a counter-narcotics operation and more like a effort to have regime change and to kind of overthrow the Venezuelan leader, Nicholas

Maduro. I mean, there is already an incredible amount of military hardware in the Caribbean. I'm talking about destroyers, Navy ships, helicopters, and many, many sailors and Marines. And it's so much military hardware that all the experts I speak to say it's much more than needed just to fire on, you know, a few votes. And now, as you point out, Trump says he's authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. Now, the White House. House will tell you that Trump campaigned on a promise to stop drugs and he'll do anything that is needed to do that. He'll take any necessary steps. But Venezuela is not necessarily a drug capital. It's not producing fentanyl, which is the big drug that's a problem here in the

United States. And that drug usually comes via land through Mexico. So I think that is one of the big reasons why so many of the experts, diplomats, foreign officials are seeing this more as regime change. And let's also just one more point. Remember that in the first Trump administration, Trump tried to topple Nicholas Maduro. He put a lot of political capital into getting Maduro out, you know, supporting another leader, even inviting that leader to the state of the union. So some of the experts I talk to see this potentially as some unfinished business. We should also note that Maduro in Venezuela is widely considered to be an authoritarian leader. His last election was considered by independent observers to have been fraudulent. But, you know, the United States becoming

involved via the CIA in another country is a whole. I mean, that is a can of worms. What has the domestic response been at this point? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a split clearly among Republicans who don't necessarily want to go in and have this kind of interventionist policy. A lot of the MAGA base certainly don't want that. And there's a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who quietly are upset because they see a lack of transparency in what the U.S. actions have been when it comes to, you know, these droning, these boats in the Caribbean that the Trump administration says are carrying drugs or any of the other actions that the Trump administration is taking. But, you know, Republicans in Congress have been largely enabling

of the Trump administration and don't want to talk out about any of that publicly. Well, last thing before we go, Franco, I do want to talk a little bit about Gaza because there obviously been some major developments there in the last couple weeks. At the beginning of this week, the living hostages were returned to Israel. And the ceasefire began. Where do things stand there now? Yeah, I mean, it's a very big deal, the deal that Trump brokered. Let's, you know, be real clear about that. But it is also a very fragile deal. It's a fragile ceasefire. I mean, violence has already broken out in Gaza. There's actually video that was distributed by Reuters, which appeared to show a public execution by Hamas as Hamas seeks to maintain control of Gaza. Now, a big part of the agreement that the United States broke. was the disarming of Hamas, and Hamas doesn't seem to want to disarm. And Trump earlier this week said that if Hamas doesn't disarm, that they will disarm Hamas.

And just yesterday, in response to these public executions, Trump issued a very pretty clear warning on his social media site. He said, if Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them. Very strong words. another way that Trump is, you know, trying to use, use his muscle to get his means. But what does that mean, right? I mean, the U.S. military, he says, is not going to go in. Does that mean letting Israel go back in? Does it mean drones, which obviously would be using the U.S. military? Well, it presents this this complicated issue, right, where Trump clearly wanted to take a major win, reasonably so, for getting the hostages back and getting this ceasefire deal done. But does taking credit for that then put him on the line.

for how this goes for the next couple weeks or months as well. Well, look, clearly the United States is a pivotal figure and like maybe the key country, you know, and has been for a long time when it comes to potentially brokering peace between Israel and the Arab world. I mean, there's no question about that, right? And no doubt about it, this was Trump's first major accomplishment, being able to get most of these hostages released. But Gaza and Israel and this crisis is not exactly out of the woods. As Franco noted, this is a fragile piece, even though Trump wants to say that this is potentially something that's generational and is going to lead to long-term peace. There's no real evidence that that's going to be the case. All right. Well, it's time for one more break. When we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go. The part of the show where we talk about things we just cannot let go of politics or otherwise. Domenico, why don't you start us off? Well, we were talking a lot about foreign policy, so I want to talk about another piece of foreign policy, I think, kind of, and about immigration and the country of Terenza. You guys know about Terenza? Not familiar. Okay. Well, there was video that went viral of a woman who arrived at JFK Airport in New York with a passport from the country of Terenza. It had biometrics.

It had all kinds of stuff that looked real. Apparently, the customs agent was quite confused and didn't know where it was. She said that it was in the caucuses. Turns out this entire thing is fake. That it was basically reflected in old urban legend, the man from Tarrid, about a traveler who arrived in Tokyo with a passport from this non-existent country and then vanished. And U.S. reality show TV clips from a reality show called Airline from like 2004, 2005, which had followed basically Southwest Airlines staff around. And I got to tell you, this thing was so hard to unravel that I, it took me a good, you know, several minutes after my daughter told me about this story. And I just thought, oh, my God, we are going to have to be really, really, really cautious and careful about videos that we see that seem to be real when it comes to politics.

I saw that as well. At first I thought, is this like some AI thing? This is crazy. Yeah. So she did not get led into the country? It's not real. Nothing happened. No, I thought you meant, oh, my God.

The entire thing never happened. The entire thing never happened. Somebody put together a video using old footage from this reality show. Made it look real. And then a Facebook post was made out of this and it went viral. So did your daughter know that this never happened? We were talking about what should I do for Can't Let It Go? I was going to talk about how my back hurts from taking them to the ACL Music Festival and how that's a young person's game.

And we just decided that this was way more interested. Okay, yeah, it's pretty good. I am noticing your posture is a little hunched right now. You know, I'm in pain. I do have some salon paws on. Brutal. Nothing says, I'm old like salon paws and an AOL account. Yoga.

Franco, what can't you let go of? Well, I love talking sports with Domenico because he's always kind of fired up about him. This one is not about MLS soccer, by the way. Oh, right. I forgot about that. This one's about tennis. And if you're a professional tennis player or a professional, any athlete, you should be careful about who you kiss.

And that's because... I thought this was about soccer because there was a kissing scandal in that. Well, this is another kissing scandal. Professional tennis player was given a four-year suspension for taking methamphetamines.

Oh, okay. And his excuse was that he kissed someone, and that's how he caught it. And this was not AI Genetamphetamines. So we don't know whether that's true or not, do we? Well, he... He didn't inhale meth from somebody he kissed. It's just an excuse.

I don't know. I don't know. I'm open-minded. You know what? You're gullible is what that means. Innocent until proven guilty in my book. I'm going to defend Miles here a little bit. Who knows how do you?

Did that happen to you too? Oh. Who knows how you? I did play tennis, but when I was growing up, I was ranked. Were you really? I was. Miles, how about you? Well, so mine, also, I had the same thought as you did.

It's like Dominico's here. We have to do a sports. let it go. But actually it was a moment that happened here at the NPR newsroom yesterday where I was working, plugging away on a story, and I heard a voice and it was Domenico from across the newsroom, and he says,

Miles, you love the Tampa Bay Rays, which is true. Tampa Bay Rays are like my favorite team of all time. And he says, Miles, you love the Tampa Bay Rays. Would you give up pizza forever for them to win the World Series? And I said, absolutely. Without missing a beat. Yeah, like, yes. A hundred percent. And he added

Well, that's what I was going to say. So then that in fired me the last 24 hours I've been keeping a list on my phone of other things I would give up for sure you've been keeping a list well I just I just started every time I thought of one this is your like Santa wish list exactly I would definitely give up pizza for the Tampa Bay Rays to win a world series I would definitely give up alcohol I would become a vegetarian vegan is like right on the borderline I would give up international travel I would work every holiday for a decade I don't think I want to work every holiday for the rest of my life but I would do it for a decade if I was sure they were going to win the world series and then

And then the thing that kind of got us debating, and I'm curious your take on this, finger or toe, would you give up one of those extremities? And I have been thinking about that. But we don't know about Franco's allegiances. We don't, actually. I ain't given up no finger or toe. Is there a team that you are? Nothing? No.

No. Well. What would you give up, Domenico? For who? I already said that if I went under and I didn't feel it, that I would give up a finger or toe. For who? For a guarantee for the New York Mets to win the World Series. Absolutely.

All right. That's all for today. Our executive producer is Methoni Maturi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Special thanks to Christianette of Calimer, Dana Farrington, and Anna Yukonanov. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Frank O'Donogne as I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Do you think people would notice if I just said I'm Franco O'Dornis? Yes. They would notice. I don't know if they would.