STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All that said, the president did one thing that made the prosecution seem personal. Trump, who has described himself as the chief law enforcement officer, called Bolton a bad person yesterday. That's a quote. There was a time when the president praised Bolton.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Where is John Bolton? Great John Bolton.
INSKEEP: This is a speech from 2018, when Bolton was serving as Trump's national security adviser.
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TRUMP: They think he's so nasty and so tough that I have to hold him back, OK? That's pretty great. And he's doing a great job.
INSKEEP: That was then. The following year, Trump fired John Bolton. He went on to publish a ferociously critical book and also criticize Trump for trying to overturn his election defeat in 2020. From time to time, Mr. Bolton has come on the line to talk with us here on NPR. And here are just a few of the things Bolton has said about Trump over the years.
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JOHN BOLTON: Donald Trump has one paramount interest in life, and that's Donald Trump.
I think what the president wants in national security, for sure, is a group of yes men and women.
To Trump, everything is personal. He thinks he's friends with Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, Trump doesn't like Zelenskyy. That's the level of Donald Trump's understanding of international affairs.
He kind of zigged into doing the right thing, then he zagged back out, probably zig and zag for the next six or eight months as well. That's the way he is. He doesn't have a national security strategy the way we normally understand it.
INSKEEP: John Bolton over the years on President Trump.
Elliot Williams is following all of this. He served as deputy assistant attorney general under President Obama, is now a CNN legal analyst and is on the line. Elliot, good morning.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So Ryan Lucas went through a lot of details. If our question on the table is whether this is a legitimate prosecution, what bits of evidence strike you as relevant?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think the completeness of the indictment, Steve, suggests - and, again, let's be clear, an indictment is just by prosecutors. No one else has stress-tested it.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: It's not a two-sided document. But at the same time, there's a tremendous amount of detail in it, including John Bolton's own statements and own understanding of documents. And it appears to have been put together by quite serious professionals. And so, at least on paper, it's a pretty serious indictment.
INSKEEP: And that is, in contrast, I guess I should note, to the indictments of James Comey, for example, and Letitia James. James Comey, especially, there was virtually no information in the indictment.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. They were very thin, and the president, you know, was quite explicit about wishing to see both Comey and James indicted. But, you know, Steve, two things can be true at the same time. Prosecutors could have put together an indictment that raises some damning allegations about John Bolton and his conduct. And at the same time, the president of the United States has impermissibly injected himself into a number of litigation -you know, a number of matters, including John Bolton's. I would say, if I were John Bolton's defense attorneys, that the president's repeated statements about John Bolton do cast at least some doubt on the indictment and at least give them at least some basis to challenge its legitimacy.
INSKEEP: And, of course, right up to yesterday when he called him a bad person.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Now, Bolton has responded, saying that this is effectively a political prosecution. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has also spoken out, and he said the charges, quote, "stem from portions of Ambassador Bolton's personal diaries over his 45-year career" and that the underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. Couple of things to talk about. Now, the first one I want to ask about is the idea that these charges were investigated before and resolved years ago. The implication there would be that Trump brought the case back, or Trump's Justice Department brought the case back. Based on what you do know of the timeline, though, is that correct?
WILLIAMS: Who knows? And we don't have that level of insight into what happened at the Justice Department. I can say, quite frankly, firsthand from having worked there, that sometimes prosecutions take years to bring. There are different reasons why prosecutors choose to bring them. So certainly there could be something nefarious. But we, as a nation, tend to believe that career prosecutors are acting in good faith, and I think we have no reason to doubt that here.
INSKEEP: OK, so no reason to doubt that the career prosecutors are acting in good faith. That is a crucial thing there. And we do know this was investigated during the Biden administration. We at least know that much, right?
WILLIAMS: Correct. Yeah.
INSKEEP: OK. And, now, let me ask about the other aspect of this that these would be personal diaries over his 45-year career. I'm thinking about this different ways. One of them is naturally, someone would take notes of important White House meetings.
WILLIAMS: Of course.
INSKEEP: I also think of a guy I know who used to work in the White House and used to tell people in the White House, colleagues in the White House, if you go into a meeting and take notes, just write in big letters at the top, Exhibit A because someone's going to sue you. If someone's going to prosecute you, that's going to become evidence. You really shouldn't take notes was his point. Is it normal that someone would take notes of extremely sensitive conversations in the White House?
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. However - and here's where Abbe Lowell may not be correct. If they are notes about secure matters or sensitive matters, they're the property of the government. Often - and I know for - you know, I did this in very sensitive and secure meetings - when you take them in a secure facility, you have to turn your notes in at the end of the meeting.
INSKEEP: Ah.
WILLIAMS: It's not - they don't just become your personal property. And so, for instance, Steve, if you and I are in a secure room, and I say, Steve, these are the details of a strike against a foreign nation, and you write that down, you've written secure, sensitive classified information down. That's the property of the government and ought to be handled and secured properly. They're not yours. So I think that Exhibit A comment is actually a very savvy one.
INSKEEP: That's really interesting. So you're telling me that if you were in a secure meeting and you took notes, there might literally be somebody waiting at the door to collect them from you and give them back when you need them.
WILLIAMS: There would be, and it just depends on the nature of the notes. Are you taking notes on a sensitive document? Are you taking notes about information that is itself sensitive, or are you simply writing down, I had coffee this morning? You know, different - one line of a document can be secure or sensitive or classified, and the rest of it may not be. Now, again, if you put one piece of classified information on it, the whole document becomes classified. And so this idea that merely because you took it in longhand, it's your property, that's simply inaccurate.
INSKEEP: What do you think about the additional idea that Bolton, according to the indictment, seems to have put this information into an email account, and it seems to be understood by the U.S. government that Iran somehow ended up in possession of the information?
WILLIAMS: Well, this is why we have these rules, Steve. The very idea that a foreign nation hacked into his government - into his email, which seems to have been the basis for this emerging in the first place, ought to give everyone who has access to access to classified information some measure of pause. Email, in general, is not secure, and nonsecure email is even less secure than the secure emails that senior government officials have. So the idea - if he was doing this, if these allegations are true, it's just staggeringly unwise for someone who, quite frankly, should have known better, and that the indictment makes clear by laying out his level of knowledge, he really should have known.
INSKEEP: Elliot Williams is a former Justice Department official under President Obama. Elliot, it's always a pleasure listening to you. Thank you so much.
WILLIAMS: Great talking to you, Steve.
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