Thread by @realjusthuman

Flashback: November 2020

NSA General Counsel Michael Ellis reviews Bolton’s memoir and determines it contained classified material.

The New York Times
web.archive.org/web/2020111123…

h/t/ @nimkef x.com/realjusthuman/…

🤔

"The information that provided the basis for the warrant to search John Bolton’s home on Friday was based on intelligence collected overseas by the C.I.A..."

Ratcliffe provided Patel "with limited access to the intelligence."
archive.is/6uxMR

"The search of the home and office of Mr. Bolton [is] a major escalation of a long-running inquiry into whether he collected or leaked sensitive national security information..."

"The nature of the intelligence collected overseas is not known."

"The C.I.A. is prohibited from law from collecting intelligence on Americans...

But the C.I.A. regularly collects information on foreign governments, particularly adversarial countries. When information on Americans is collected during those espionage operations...

there are procedures to share that information with law enforcement when officials believe an investigation could be warranted."

"The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system..."

archive.is/i5noH

"The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration, when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information"

"The emails in question, according to the people, were sent by Mr. Bolton and included information that appeared to derive from classified documents he had seen while he was national security adviser."

"One major reason for conducting the searches was to see if Mr. Bolton possessed material that matched or corroborated the intelligence agency material, which, if found, would indicate that the emails found in the possession of the foreign spy service were genuine"

"The material in the intercepted emails included information that Mr. Bolton did not ultimately use in his book. That may suggest that he had been told it remained classified..."

Fun fact:

The current Deputy Director at the CIA is Michael Ellis.

The same Michael Ellis who, as General Counsel at the NSA, reviewed Bolton’s memoir and determined it contained classified material.