Good evening. I'm Amna Abbas.

And I'm Jeff Bennett. On the news hour tonight, President Trump's former national security

advisor turned critic John Bolton is indicted over his handling of classified documents.

The Trump administration authorizes covert CIA operations in Venezuela as maritime strikes on alleged drug

boats continue.

And as the tenuous Israel-Ghazza ceasefire holds, Israelis work to process the collective trauma

over the October 7th attacks.

Our effort to try to move on, to live powerfully is is for sure helping us to deal with everything we're going through.

Welcome to the News Hour.

The federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former national security advisor John Bolton today on 18 charges of retaining and transmitting classified information to two of his relatives. The indictment comes two months after FBI agents raided Bolton's home and office, and according to court filings, found documents labeled as classified.

Bolton served as U.N. ambassador and then national security advisor in the first Trump administration, before emerging as one of the president's most vocal critics.

Joining us to discuss this is Mary McCord.

She's a former acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

She now heads the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.

Mary, welcome back and thanks for joining us.

Just briefly set us up here.

What exactly is the indictment alleging that Bolton did when it comes to these classified

documents? So these are serious charges. There are 18 counts in this indictment. Eight of them

involve him actually transmitting classified information, national defense information, over his

personal Gmail account, as well as other non-government

messaging apps while he was the national security advisor and transmitting classified

information that he was learning, at least based on the allegations and the indictment,

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