WSJ What’s News - Another Trump Critic Faces Prosecution

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

A.M. Edition for Oct. 17. The Justice Department has indicted former national security adviser John Bolton, charging the one-time Trump official with mishandling classified information. Plus, Venezuela’s president mobilizes the country’s troops in a show of defiance against the U.S. And WSJ autos reporter Stephen Wilmot explains why the auto industry is panicking over a chip shortage - and not the AI kind. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply. The Justice Department indicts John Bolton after an investigation into his handling of classified information. Plus, Venezuela's president mobilizes the country's troops in a show. show of defiance against the US. And we look at why gold and silver are shining brighter than ever before. Silver is in a real sweet spot right now. It's benefiting from demand for haven assets, just like gold is. But at the same time, it has industrial uses unlike to a large at St. St. Gold. It's Friday, October 17th. I'm Kate Bullivan for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories

moving your world today. John Bolt was just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland. Do you have a reaction to that? I didn't know that. You tell me for the first time, but I think he's a bad person. I think he's a bad guy. Yeah, he's a bad guy.

It's too bad. President Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, has been indicted on charges of allegedly mishandling classified information. News of the charges broke while the president was speaking. to reporters in the Oval Office. An FBI investigation into Bolton began before Trump's return to the White House, with agents searching his DC office and home in Maryland back in August. Prosecutors said that Bolton shared more than 1,000 pages of diary-like entries with two

relatives, sometimes from his private email accounts, that contained classified information about his daily activities as National Security Advisor. A person familiar with the matter said the relatives were Bolton's wife and daughter. Bolton is also accused of unlawfully storing documents, writings and notes about national defense at his home. Bolton clashed with Trump over multiple foreign policy issues during an 18-month tenure in the president's first term and has been a critic ever since.

Here he is speaking at Harvard University last month. Well, I think it's important to understand that Trump is an aberration in American politics. There has never been anything like this before. and hopefully never will be again. In a statement, Bolton described the charges as part of an effort to intimidate Trump critics and that he was looking forward to exposing Trump's, quote, abuse of power. He's just the latest prominent Trump critic to face prosecution. The Justice Department recently launched prosecutions against former FBI director James Comey

and New York's Democratic Attorney General Letitia James after the president demanded them. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is moving military troops to the Caribbean coast and mobilising what he says is a million-strong militia in a show of defiance against the US. The strongman's regime has also cranked up its propaganda machine on state television, radio and social media amidst the biggest American military build-up in the Caribbean since the 1980s. It comes after President Trump authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela and U.S. strikes on boats operated by alleged drug traffickers that have killed at least 27 people in recent weeks.

The Pentagon has also moved advanced weaponry, Navy warships, fighter jets and attack submarines to the area north of Venezuela, along with elite special operations forces. Zohan Mamdani and his rivals, former Governor Andrew Quom, and Curtis Sliwa traded Barbes in the first New York mayoral election debate. The heated exchange touched on issues of affordability, public safety and their approach to President Trump. Here's Mamdani and Cuomo. I would make it clear to the president that I am willing to not only speak to him but to work with him

if it means delivering on lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers. That's something that he ran his presidential campaign on. And yet all he's been able to deliver thus far has been prosecuting his political enemies and trying to enact the largest deportation program in American history. You know, if you come after New York, you know what I'm going to do, you know, it's going to be ugly, and, you know, my chances are almost 50-50, even though you're the president. I'd like to work with you.

I think we can do good things together, but, number one, I will fight you every step of the way if you try to hurt New York. Sliwa, the Republican candidate, had to fight at times for a chance to speak, as Mamdani and Cuomo went after each other with sharp criticism. That said, all three candidates agreed that they'd object to Trump sending National Guard troops to New York, and all three also declined to endorse New York's Democratic governor, Kathy Hochel, who is running for re-election. To New Jersey now, where a teenage girl is suing the developer of a clothed removal software,

after a real photo of her was allegedly transformed by a classmate, into at least one fake nude image. The plaintiff is suing AI-Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Limited, the company behind the web tool Cloth Off, which was allegedly used to generate the images. The lawsuit intends to compel the maker of Cloth Off to delete non-consensual images and remove its tool from the internet.

The owners of Clothoff didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. And President Trump has struck a deal to lower fertility medication costs and provide increased flexibility for employers offering standalone in vitro fertilisation or IVF insurance. It's something the President raised on the campaign trail but falls short of his pledge

that such treatments would be provided for free. EMD Serrano has agreed to offer consumers an 84% discount on certain fertility drugs which will be made available via Trump RX a new government website. In exchange, the drug business maker will be exempt from national security tariffs and will receive faster reviews from the Food and Drug Administration.

Starbucks is assessing bids from five partners for its China business as it seeks a partner to navigate intense competition from Chinese coffee chains. The company estimates the value of the deal to be over $10 billion, including royalties, the upfront investment by a potential partner and Starbucks's retained stake in the China business. Meanwhile, the auto industry is panicking about another potential chip shortage, but this time from a Dutch chipmaker at the heart of the US-China trade war. We're reporting that Nexperia told customers last week that it was stopping shipments of parts after the Dutch government wrestled control of the company from its Chinese owner,

which has been blacklisted by the US. And as Auto's reporter, Stephen Wilmot explains, the industry is very dependent on those chips. Nixperia is the market leader in a really basic type of chip, mainly transistors and diodes, that goes into everything and anything. Electronic windows, your electronic windscreen wipers, anything that's controlled by a chip at a basic level in a car, will have these chips in it. And although it's quite a basic part, every automaker will be exposed. The question is, A, how fast they can sub in alternative supplies

and, B, how fast they can pressure politicians to resolve the fundamental disagreement over an expeerial control. Coming up, with gold notching a string of record-breaking days recently, silver is now refusing to be outshined. More on the ongoing precious metals rally after the break. Ford was built on the belief that. that the world doesn't get to decide what you're capable of. You do.

So, ask yourself, can you or can't you? Can you load up a Ford F-150 and build your dream with sweat and steel? Can you chase thrills and conquer curbs in a mustache? Can you take a Bronco to where the map ends and adventure begins? Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. Ready, set, Ford. You might think the hottest trade in markets this year is AI stocks, or maybe even cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But in fact, it's much more ordinary, so much so that you can find it in your jewelry box or kitchen drawers.

Silver has surged more than 70% this year, outpacing stocks like NVIDIA or Broadcom. Earlier this week, it even surpassed its previous record last hit in 1980. Caitlin McCabe spoke to markets reporter Joe Wallace about what's behind this eye-popping rally. Silver is in a real sweet spot right now. It's benefiting from demand for haven assets at a time of huge geopolitical and economic uncertainty just like gold is. But at the same time, it has industrial uses unlike to a large extent gold. And so investors are snapping it up, manufacturers are snapping it up, and the result is a pretty eye-popping. rally. I think that's one thing that's maybe a bit surprising about silver. When people think

about silver, they think about obvious things like jewelry or cutlery, but what exactly is silver used for? The really big new source of demand over the past few years has been the solar industry that's boomed as the price of solar panels has fallen sharply. And so there's been relentless buying from that market. And silver's uses in manufacturing and electronics are so widespread that the US is even considering whether to add silver to a list of materials that deems important to national security. And that's another reason for this rally, because if the US were to do that, then Trump might impose tariffs on silver. People have tried to get ahead of tariffs and possible contortions in the market by snapping it up ahead of time. Much earlier in the

year, people were shipping silver bars from Europe to the US on boats and even in some cases on planes. and now in the next few weeks we're expecting to learn whether those tariffs are indeed imposed. You mentioned at the start, Joe, that silver is considered a haven asset. You know, I think people think of gold as your sort of classic haven asset. Obviously, that's seen quite a rally this year. But are people treating silver in the same way? Are they using it as a protection from obviously tariff fears, but also inflation and just sort of other wider concerns out in the world right now?

Well, there's been this big debate in markets about whether the rally in gold and also silver shows that these precious metals are indeed havens that have seen as stores of value because they've had cultural cachet for thousands of years or whether it's a sign that actually there is a risky asset like any other and that they're rising at the same time as the NASDAQ and AI stocks and cryptocurrencies and that they're a sign of froth in markets. I think it can be both at the same time people want to buy assets of any kind because there's a lot of money that wants to be put to work. But at the same time maybe there's a desire to buy things that are tangible which maybe don't have a

to the dollar in the same way, even though silver's price and dollars and gold is priced in dollars, but maybe something that's a bit removed from the financial system. So it might not be as clear cut as saying it's either a risky asset or in a haven. It can benefit from both at the same time. But zooming out here a little bit, Joe, how do you go about buying it? Over the past few months, a lot of the money coming into silver has come through an exchange traded fund that's backed by silver. People have snapped this up. And what this fund does is it buys physical silver and stores it when shares of the ETF rise in price. It's possible people are buying this because they want some exposure to precious metals

and the price of a separate gold-back EDF has got so high that they kind of think, well, maybe the next best thing is to own the silver ETF. One thing that's happened because of this is that a lot of silver has effectively been taken off the market. So if people want to go to buy silver bars in London right now, it's become much more difficult because a lot of that silver is held by the ETF. And over the past few days in London, which is where most trading and physical precious metals takes place, there have been complaints that there's really almost no silver to be bought.

And so you've seen all kinds of wacky moves and interest rates on silver and spreads between New York and London. Some veteran traders have even said the market's breaking down a bit because there's been so much silver drained out of the market that there's just not much on hand if someone were to want to buy it. How are sort of everyday people responding? unloading silver jewelry they have or what's going on here. As you might expect, some people are looking at this rally as a chance not to buy but to sell. And we had a great story recently from the Diamond District of New York where the gold dealers there have been inundated with people coming forward with family heirlooms, jewelry, pieces of gold coins that they want to sell at these record prices. And anecdotally, the same thing might be starting to happen in silver as prices hit

these records. Of course, this is the kind of thing that could eventually contribute to the rally eventually coming to a halt because there's more supply coming onto the market. That's Markets reporter Joe Wallace. Joe, thanks for joining us. Thanks. And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bark. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Kate Bullivan for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a nice weekend. And thanks for listening. Thank you.