🧵United States v. Bolton
This case is going to go on for at least another year...
And there could be additional charges.
A Joint Status Report filed ahead of a Status Conference (held Friday) indicates that the bulk of discovery in this case will be classified.
That means CIPA (Classified Information Procedures Act) and counsel, plus others involved in the case, will need the appropriate clearances.
It's going to take some time. Months.
No trial date is currently set.
A proposed CIPA schedule takes us well into the fall of 2026.
At the Friday Status Conference, lead prosecutor Thomas Sullivan, who is the Chief of the National Security and Cybercrime Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, told Judge Chuang that "potential other charges" are possible.
The intelligence community is still going through the classified material related to the case AND...
A "filter team" is needed to go through material that could be attorney-client privileged.
Did Bolton also send classified information to his attorney? Or to others via his attorney?
It's a method of transmission we have seen before.
The indictment says he sent the "diary-like entries" to Individuals 1 and 2 (assumed to be his wife and daughter).
But it also mentions a "representative for Bolton" notifying the Gov't of the hack of Bolton's AOL account by the Iranians.
The language used can be read to indicate that the "representative" was aware of both the classified information in the email account and that Bolton had shared classified information with Individuals 1 and 2.
But it does not directly state that he was or wasn't.
Here's the section of the indictment that describes Bolton's representative alerting the FBI to the hack.
The hacker sent an email to both Bolton and the representative, telling them to
"Contact me before it's too late..."
The email included "content" from Bolton's email as attachments, which the representative described to the FBI as potentially containing "sensitive information."
By "recent acquittal," I think the hacker is referring to the stipulated dismissal of the action the US took against Bolton over his book containing classified information.
That dismissal was filed June 16, 2021, just weeks before the hack was reported.
The "expurgated sections of your book" would, I think, be the portions Bolton had agreed to remove from the book per the agreement with the US Gov.
Bolton also shared "drafts of portions of his book with his publisher and literary agent "via a non-governmental messaging application."
I wonder if the "expurgated sections of your book" the Iran hacker brought up and attached in the email to both Bolton and his representative are those "draft" sections of Bolton's book that Bolton sent the publisher and literary agent.
If true, that would mean he sent classified information to others beyond Individuals 1 and 2.
The representative emailed the FBI on behalf of Bolton, and those communications concern events central to the charges.
The "filter team" will set aside what's attorney-client privileged and what isn't.
But I wonder if Bolton also sent classified information to that representative.
Or to others via his representative.
Links
Indictment
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Joint Status Report
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Hill article
thehill.com/regulation/cou…
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