John Bolton Indictment Provides Interesting Details About Hack of His AOL Account and Extortion Attempt

pThe investigation into former national security advisor John Boltons handling of classified material stemmed in part from an admission Bolton made to the FBI in July 2021 that hackers believed to be from Iran had breached his private AOL email account and tried to extort him over classified information contained in itppThe breach was reported last month by CNN following a law enforcement search of Boltons office and home in August But it was based on a redacted search warrant affidavit in which details around the hacking incident were blacked out and only a header was visible Hack of Bolton AOL Account by Foreign EntityppThe indictment of Bolton released Thursday has now provided details of the breach as well as how Bolton found himself in the position of being extorted after regularly sending what prosecutors say was topsecret information to his wife and daughter via email and encrypted chat Prosecutors say Bolton did this regularly over the fifteen short months he was in the job often sending excited messages with multiple exclamation points and 10 to 25page documents containing information about discussions he had in the White House Situation Room or detailing information he learned in other meetingsppThe indictment includes a number of interesting details I havent seen reported elsewhere yet so I thought Id go over the contents of the indictment hereppBolton used this communication prosecutors say as a kind of diary that he was keeping in order to eventually write a book about his experience as national security advisor Prosecutors say Bolton took detailed handwritten notes on yellow notepads throughout his workday at the White House and in other secure locations and then transcribed them on a computer and sent them to his wife and daughter via AOL or Gmail accounts or via an encrypted messaging app In some cases either Bolton or his wife or daughter printed out some of the emails and these printouts were still in Boltons home when law enforcement searched it in AugustppHe sent his two family members more than a thousand pages of information about his daytoday activities prosecutors say including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRETSCI level The indictment doesnt identify the recipients only indicating they were two people related to Bolton but CNN has reported they were his wife and daughter Bolton enlisted them as informal editors to help him shape the notes he sent them But at times the indictment shows they also tasked him with missions to get specific information suggested actions he might take in his work and expressed frustration or disappointment when he didnt send them information they anticipatedppFor example in December 2018 Bolton sent them a 15page document that contained information about an individual who had been arrested in a foreign country One of the recipients its not clear if it was his wife or daughter expressed disappointment that he hadnt sent information about the administrations sentiment about the arrest Bolton allegedly replied Im working on itppA couple of days later the correspondent told Bolton that the arrested individual was apparently in the process of being interrogated by law enforcement in the country where they were arrested and that a relative of the individual would be in DC She suggested it might be useful to get him in front of senior US Government official or anyone elseppAt some point between September 2019 when Trump fired Bolton via Twitter and July 2021 someone hacked into Boltons AOL email account and obtained the correspondence hed sent his wife and daughter and then tried to extort him Prosecutors say that Bolton believed Iran was behind the breach although theres nothing in the indictment to indicate why they attributed it to the Islamic Republic ppBolton was national security advisor to Trump from April 2018 toSeptember 2019 and immediately after taking the job he began sending his wife and daughter the transcripts of notes he was keeping while on the job On April 8 2018 the day before he began his national security job he and his wife and daughter had created a group chat specifically to do this His wife or daughter asked in the chat why they were using the messaging app Why are we using this now The encryption The other family member replied Yup Why not And Bolton added For Diary in the futureppOver the subsequent weeks and months he sent them large attachments ranging between 10 and 25 pages as he received military and intelligence briefings and went on official travel On July 23 2018 Bolton sent them a 24page document describing information he had learned on his job and followed up with a message saying None of which we talk about His wife or daughter replied ShhhhhppAlmost immediately after Trump fired Bolton on September 10 2019 Bolton began compiling the notes hed taken including the ones hed sent to his wife and daughter into a book Dramatic ending his wife or daughter wrote to the group after his firing But will there be a new diary The other member of the group replied Nope on diary Now bookwritingppThe day after Bolton was fired his literary agent sent an email to a book publisher describing the manuscript her client was writing saying it would be written in a meticulously observed manner with direct quotes from all parties based on contemporaneous notes Bolton reportedly received a 2 million advance for the book He had already done so much writing by the time he left his job that he was able to deliver the manuscript to the publisher on December 30 a little over three months after he was firedppBolton submitted the book to the National Security Council to review around the same time he sent it to his publisher national security officials are required to submit their manuscripts to the government for advance review to determine if any classified information is in them that needs to be removed Bolton was told his book did contain a significant amount of highly classified material The indictment notes that Bolton removed this material from the book before it was published six months later But he failed to wait to receive an approval letter from the government a requirement before he publishedppAs the release date for his book approached the following spring the Justice Department filed an injunction to block publication of the book but failed So the Justice Department sued Bolton in an attempt to seize his earnings from the book A year later in June 2021 it agreed to dismiss the civil suit on condition that Bolton sign an agreement to hand over to the government any material in his possession or control that might contain classified information ppBolton signed the settlement agreement on June 16 but on July 6 a representative for Bolton sent an email to the FBI revealing that Boltons personal email account had been hackedppEvidently someone has gotten into Amb Boltons personal email account the representative wrote and it looks as though it is someone in Iran The person didnt indicate how they came to the conclusion that Iran or someone in Iran was behind it The indictment does not reveal how or when Bolton discovered the hack but the hacker may have communicated directly with Bolton Because on July 25th weeks after reaching out to the FBI Bolton and his representative received what appears to be an extortion email from the hacker suggesting perhaps that the person knew Bolton had contacted the FBI about the breach The person wroteppThe indictment doesnt indicate if the hacker was seeking money or anything else from BoltonppBoltons representative sent the hackers message to the FBI on July 28 indicating that they were just sending the text of the extortion email and not the documents the hacker attached since there might be sensitive information in them ppA day later Boltons representative followed up with another email to the FBI informing the bureau that Bolton would be deleting the contents of the hacked email accountppOn August 5th the hacker sent another missive to Bolton OK John As you want apparently well disseminate the expurgated sections of your book by reference to your leaked email The hacker also wrote Good luck Mr MustacheppThe message suggests the hacker had possession of the classified portions of Boltons book that he had removed from it before publication The indictment does not indicate if the hacker possessed documents containing classified information that Bolton had sent his wife and daughter but the implication is that the hacker had these as well as deleted book passages However at no point in his communication with the FBI prosecutors say did Boltons representative reveal that the hacked AOL account contained classified information that Bolton had shared with his wife and daughter during the time he was national security advisor and that the hacker may have obtained thisppThe following year the FBI launched a formal investigation into the hack believing the email account likely did contain classified information that Bolton illegally shared Prosecutors obtained warrants to get the contents of Boltons AOL and Gmail accounts But the investigation progressed slowing CNN reports because data from the accounts had to be reviewed by the intelligence community and also processed through a special filter team at the Justice Department whose job it was to pull out any confidential attorneyclient records that might be in the accounts since Bolton was a lawyer and may have used the accounts to communicate with clientsppSo what was the nature of the information that Bolton sent to his wife and daughter via unencrypted email or encrypted messaging chat The government lists the following in the indictmentppppppppppp