More charges are possible against John Bolton, Justice Department says
By Holmes Lybrand, Devan Cole, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton could face more charges, Justice Department prosecutors suggested at a Friday court hearing in his criminal case.
The Justice Department continues to go through the large amount of documents recovered in the case, including from Bolton’s home in Maryland and his office in Washington, DC.
The material, which prosecutors say includes classified information they accuse Bolton of illegally sharing with others during his time in Trump’s first term, must be reviewed by the intelligence community before Bolton’s defense team can have access to it.
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment on prosecutor’s suggestion that additional charges could come.
Because of this extended process for discovery, no trial has been set in the case and the review alone is expected to last until at least May.
Coming into the hearing, prosecutors and Bolton’s team proposed that all discovery would be produced by late May, but US District Judge Theodore Chuang on Friday appeared frustrated with that plan and ordered prosecutors to speed up production of the documents at the center of the case.
“I’m still having trouble with why we need seven months for this,” he said.
Chuang, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, at one point scolded prosecutors for what he viewed as their failure to complete some of the time-intensive work that needs to be done with the US intelligence community in cases involving classified materials.
“If you actually wanted to indict, you’d want to know what the intelligence community actually needs with these,” the judge said at one point.
But prosecutors pointed to several issues they say have been slowing down their work, including the involvement of a “filter team” to help figure out which material may involve attorney-client privilege.
Thomas Sullivan, the lead prosecutor in the case, told the judge that there was a “voluminous” amount of documents in the case that needed to be sifted through by both his team, the intelligence community and that separate “filter team.”
“That’s a process that takes time,” Sullivan said. “I can assure the court that we are working with them to review these documents as quickly as possible.”
Bolton pleaded not guilty last month to eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.
This story was updated with additional reporting.
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