John Bolton launched a plan to document and transmit classified information before he even started his job as President Trump’s national security advisor, according to the federal indictment against him.
Two weeks later, he made his first transmission using the encrypted messaging app to two people, a 25-page document “which described information” that Bolton learned in his first few days on the job, the indictment says. The indictment doesn’t identify those people, but the New York Times reports they were his wife and daughter.
For the next 17 months, Bolton regularly sent “diary-like” entries to them about what he saw and heard that included classified information. From the indictment:
BOLTON wrote many of these diary-like entries by transcribing his handwritten notes from his day’s activities into word processing documents, which he then electronically sent to Individuals 1 and 2 through a commercial non-governmental messaging application. On other occasions, BOLTON used his personal non-governmental email accounts, such as email accounts hosted by AOL and Google, to email information classified up to TOP SECRET/SCI level to Individuals 1 and/or 2 at their personal email accounts."
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