FBI seized documents labeled classified from John Bolton’s office

Federal agents seized several documents labeled “classified”, “confidential” and “secret” of the office of the former national security advisor John Bolton in the context of an investigation on the question of whether Bolton has poorly managed the defense files, according to uncharted judicial files on Tuesday.

The documents seized marked as confidential seem to concern the weapons of mass destruction, the national “strategic communication” and the American mission to the United Nations, wrote the investigators in a cataloged list of what was collected during research at the end of August. The list did not specify from documents.

The FBI also entered phones and computer equipment at the time.

More than a dozen pages of the Affidavit have partial or complete editors. We do not know what exactly the documents or why they were marked secret, confidential and classified.

Abbe Lowell, lawyer for Bolton, said in a statement on Wednesday that the documents indicated no reprehensible act. He added that many documents had decades, from Bolton’s long career to the State Department, as an assistant prosecutor and American ambassador to the United Nations.

“An objective and in -depth exam will show that nothing inappropriate has been stored or kept by Amb. Bolton,” said Lowell.

Bolton served for 17 months as a national security advisor during Trump’s first mandate, competing with the president of Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea before being ousted in 2019. He subsequently criticized Trump’s approach in terms of foreign policy and government, including in a foreign book in 2020, “the room in which it happened”, who described the president foreign.

The affidavit of the search mandate indicates that an official of the National Security Council had examined the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it seemed to contain “large quantities” of classified information, some at a top secret level.

Bolton’s lawyer said that many documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Bolton’s book.

Bolton is Trump’s last political opponents to find himself targeted by federal investigators. Prosecutors also launched criminal investigations into the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, California senator Adam Schiff and former FBI director James B. Comey.