XPost: alt.government.employees, alt.politics.trump, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   The acting U.S. Attorney in Maryland is moving forward quickly to seek   
   criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s former national security   
   adviser John Bolton, according to two people familiar with the case.   
      
   A complaint or an indictment could come as early as next week, said the   
   sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters   
   without authorization.   
      
   A grand jury in Maryland has been hearing evidence for several weeks   
   related to claims that Bolton improperly kept classified national security   
   information in his Maryland home. But the pace of the case has recently   
   sped up, the two people said.   
      
   If Bolton is criminally charged as attorneys in the Maryland office   
   expect, he would be the third of Trump’s perceived enemies to face federal   
   prosecution under Trump’s Department of Justice in a matter of a few   
   weeks. Bolton, whom Trump fired from his first administration, has been a   
   vocal critic of the president. His lawyer has said he did nothing   
   improper.   
      
   Unlike the widespread resistance career prosecutors in Virginia have shown   
   to Trump’s pressure campaign to charge former FBI Director James Comey and   
   New York Attorney General Letitia James, career prosecutors in Maryland   
   consider charges against Bolton to have some factual merit, the people   
   said.   
      
   Kelly Hayes, the acting U.S. Attorney for Maryland, has told Justice   
   Department colleagues she believes there is a reasonable basis to pursue   
   charges against Bolton, the people said.   
      
   In Virginia, the first U.S. attorney installed by Trump resigned under   
   pressure after he pushed back against charging Comey and James. Both were   
   indicted after Trump made his personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan, the top   
   prosecutor in the commonwealth. She single-handedly presented evidence to   
   grand jurors in both cases.   
      
   Ed Martin, who served briefly as Trump’s acting U.S. attorney in the   
   District of Columbia and whom Trump has since named to head the Justice   
   Department’s Weaponization Working Group, has met multiple times with   
   Hayes to monitor the Bolton case.   
      
   According to one of the people familiar with the status of the case, Hayes   
   and her team are weighing whether to file charges against Bolton in a   
   rushed complaint — a court filing that would allow the office to lodge   
   criminal allegations quickly and seek a grand jury indictment at a later   
   date.   
      
   FBI agents conducted a surprise raid of Bolton’s home in Bethesda,   
   Maryland, on Sept. 22 in what sources at the time said was a search for   
   suspected classified records. The search warrant was based on information   
   provided by the CIA and approved by a federal judge. On the same day of   
   the search, FBI Director Kash Patel circulated a social media post on X   
   that read: “NO ONE is above the law... @FBI agents on mission.”   
      
   Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, has repeatedly said that documents with   
   classified markings kept by Bolton dated back to the George W. Bush   
   administration, when Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United   
   Nations, and would be typical of those kept by a long-time government   
   employee.   
      
   “An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was   
   stored or kept by Ambassador Bolton,” Lowell said in a statement last   
   month.   
      
   Neither Lowell nor the Justice Department immediately returned requests   
   for comment on Friday.   
      
   Last month, a judge unsealed a heavily redacted version of the affidavit   
   of probable cause used by the FBI to support its search of Bolton’s home.   
      
   Page 12 of the document has a heading titled “Hack of Bolton’s AOL Account   
   by Foreign Entity.” That section is entirely blacked out.   
      
   Two people familiar with the matter told MSNBC that the redacted section   
   describes how the U.S. government discovered Bolton’s AOL emails during   
   intelligence collection directed at that unnamed foreign government. What   
   was found, they said, fueled an investigation into whether Bolton has   
   mishandled classified information that began during the Biden   
   administration.   
      
   The sources said that the sensitivity of how the government came by those   
   records was one factor that slowed the Bolton investigation. By moving   
   forward, they said, the United States has now revealed to a foreign   
   government that it has access to specific systems — a revelation, the   
   sources said, that is likely more damaging to U.S. national security than   
   any secret Bolton may have revealed.   
      
   https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/criminal-charges-bolton-expected-early-   
   week-rcna236926   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)