Welcome to the News Hour. A 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, that he was learning every day. Some of those are alleged to have

started with things like the Intel briefer said or while I was in the situation room.

And he was charged with transmitting those to two people related to him.

I'm hearing some reporting.

It might be his wife and daughter.

Two people related to him who, of course, don't have security clearances and weren't

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