Hi, everyone. Happy Friday. It's 4 o'clock in New York. This afternoon makes it three

indictments of Donald Trump's critics in a little over three weeks because today, John Bolton,

the former national security advisor to Donald Trump, surrendered himself

to law enforcement and submitted a not guilty plea to a federal indictment.

There are 18 counts in all.

They have to do with the retention and transmission of national defense information,

specifically diary notes shared by email with two people who did not have the proper security

clearance. Those notes were regarding his day-to-day activities as national security

advisor to Donald Trump. In addition to travel restrictions put into place on John Bolton today,

he also faces up to 10 years in custody and a $250,000

fine per count, meaning if convicted, he could possibly spend the rest of his life in prison.

His next court date is November 21st. As his case and his defense come into focus,

so too do some of the similarities and differences between this particular indictment and prosecution and those of Donald Trump's other political targets.

The comparison is pretty simple. This is yet again an example of the Justice Department's unique and formidable singular power really trained on

one of Donald Trump's critics, and yet there are distinctions as well. Consider that where the

cases against Jim Comey and Tish James were brought by a political appointee, the indictment against

John Bolton is being handled by career prosecutors, at least at this point.

In other words, there appears to be more there there in the Bolton instance.

This is where the nuance comes into play, though, because John Bolton was not exactly the first

person in American history to ever see or handle classified information prior to writing a book

about his time in government. So he certainly could not have been the first and only person

to submit manuscripts as part of his publication review designed to then remove the sensitive

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