Bannon`s War Room
Episode 4858: Arraignment Of John Bolton; Taking Down Leftist Terror Groups
17 Oct 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What charges is John Bolton facing in his arraignment?
Bolton faces 18 counts related to the retention and transmission of national defense information. In short, this is a classified documents case. Back in August, the FBI searched Bolton's home and office. At the time, Trump made it all about him, saying, quote, my house was also raided. Trump is still fuming about the criminal investigation into the classified information he stored at Mar-a-Lago.
So when he calls Bolton a, quote, bad person, we should note the hypocrisy. Trump was charged with very similar crimes. Of course, Trump never had to face those charges in court. Judge Eileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal branch, threw them out.
As for Bolton, he warned about this moment last year during the presidential campaign, writing in his book, quote, Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.
Chapter 2: How did Trump's classified documents case relate to Bolton's situation?
I didn't know that you tell me for the first time, but I think he's a bad person. I think he's a. Bad guy, yeah, he's a bad guy. Too bad, but that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes, right? That's the way it goes. Will I what?
Have you reviewed the case against him?
No, I haven't. I haven't.
Chapter 3: What warnings did Bolton give about Trump's presidency?
But I just think he's a bad person.
We know now from what we've seen in the past couple of weeks that when Donald Trump makes these demands of charges against his perceived enemies, sometimes those charges follow. What is not clear at all, however, is what crimes these people may have committed. It seems that Donald Trump is interested solely in payback because these are people who presided over charges against him.
So, you know, Jack Smith was the special counsel and Lisa Monaco was the deputy attorney general at the time. Andrew Weissman was just somebody who worked on Robert Mueller's team. And so there's no suggestion of any crimes. criminal conduct by any of these people.
And so targeting individuals because they're bad people or because you want to seek payback is a really inappropriate use of the Justice Department. So I don't know that prosecutors are going to find any crimes that they can charge these people with. But if they do, I think they will be highly suspect along the lines of the Jim Comey and Letitia James indictments.
This is a very serious and detailed indictment. It says that John Bolton derived secrets from his time as national security advisor, assembled them because he was writing a book, sent them over unclassified email and messaging apps to his wife and daughter. We've identified the two people as his wife and daughter. And then that information was hacked by the government of Iran.
At least one of those email accounts was hacked. And so the government of Iran obtained some of these state secrets, according to this indictment. And the indictment says that Bolton used language that made clear he knew he was talking about sensitive information. Things like the Intel briefer said or went in the situation room. I learned.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Bolton's classified information handling?
So this is. And these charges, as you said, carry 10 years each. So he could spend the rest of his life in prison, in theory, if convicted on these charges. But let me tell you what the defense could be here. I should add that this case has been this case is being prosecuted by career prosecutors, respected people.
Unlike the Comey and the James case, which was avoided by every career prosecutor in the department and pursued only by Donald Trump's political appointee. This one has gone through normal channels, as we understand it. But let me explain some potential mitigating circumstances here. Lots of people. who have jobs where they see classified information write books.
And they send the manuscript through a publication review, for example, if you're a CIA officer. And oftentimes, those reviewers will say, sorry, you can't say that. It was classified. We're keeping that out of the book. Well, that information was classified. It went over an unclassified email system. Those people don't get prosecuted for doing that.
What's at issue here are not documents marked classified, which was the case in the Donald Trump indictment. This was information that John Bolton gathered and wrote down in diaries and sent that the FBI and the CIA and other people have determined contain national defense information. And when you look at the descriptions in the indictment, it's pretty clear that some of it probably did.
Chapter 5: How does the indictment against Bolton differ from Trump's previous cases?
But the question here is, where is the line for people who are writing books
if they're john bolton did go through the publication review process here now uh now there's allegations that he ignored some of the suggestions from people about what to leave out of the book but uh there's a lawyer named mark zade who represents a lot of people who write books and what he was saying last night is that if you're going to prosecute john bolton you got to prosecute a lot of other people who wrote books and had potentially classified information uh on their email systems which was then left out of the books but which was actually sensitive
And the other thing is Abby Lowell, John Bolton's lawyer, is saying here that this was not classified. These were this was information that he kept for diaries. And he said that the FBI has known about this for a long time. And that's true. This arose in the Biden administration.
And what seems to be the case is that they did not know the extent of what was in at least one of his email accounts until they discovered that Iran, they discovered the material that Iran had hacked through a U.S. intelligence penetration of Iran. That's according to my reporting.
And that's one of the reasons this case didn't go forward in the Biden administration is because officials were concerned about revealing that penetration. The Trump administration has made a different calculation. They're OK with revealing it. They've revealed it now to the Iranians. So whatever penetration they had is now shut down. That's how badly they wanted to prosecute John Bolton.
And that's where you can ask questions about whether this case should have gone forward, guys.
Vote, who was a key architect of Project 2025 and also served as OMB director. During President Trump's first term, he has been a catalyst behind the administration's efforts to fire federal workers, gut key agencies, and slash foreign aid.
Now, a piece published jointly by ProPublica and The New Yorker is taking a deeper dive into votes dismantling of the federal government, chronicling his rise from the mailroom of the U.S.
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Chapter 6: What arguments are being made regarding the legality of Bolton's actions?
Senate to what some call the shadow president. Votes vision for the U.S. government, an all-powerful executive branch would be able to fire workers, cancel programs, shutter agencies, and undo regulations that cover air and water quality, financial markets, workplace protections, and civil rights.
The Department of Justice, meanwhile, would shed its historical independence and operate at the direction of the White House. All of this puts vote at the center of what Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, described to me as the Trump administration's complete disregards for the law.
And if you look at historical parallels and you read books like the one written by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright or Anne Applebaum, the groundwork being laid here for destroying democracy.
But John Bolton did come back with a statement on this. And he's you know, he's not going down as just James noted as well without fighting. He said, quote, These charges are not just about Trump's focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.
Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America's constitutional system and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.
The question is which guardrails are left given what the Supreme Court has done.
Right. That's that's exactly right. There aren't many guardrails left. And that's the reason why I feel the need to come on tonight and really just speak in very clear terms, because the only guardrails is is the American public and our skepticism and that we don't start with the presumption that an indictment returned against Donald Trump's political enemies is on the up and up.
We start with the presumption, the strong presumption that when Donald Trump's political enemies all of a sudden find themselves magically under indictment, that it's probably not on the up and up, that it probably is because something untoward happened. And so that's all I'm asking everyone to do right now. This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on this people.
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Chapter 7: How are leftist groups being targeted in the current political climate?
I got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? MAGA Media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann.
It's Friday, 17 October, in the year of our Lord, 2025. I'm here in the Lone Star State with Brian Harrison. Brian, thank you for joining us today for the broadcast.
Great to be with you.
This afternoon and tomorrow. So we're going to be juggling a lot here at War Room and Real America's Voice. We have the Moms for Liberty, a huge conference in Florida. which a lot of the RAV personalities are speaking at, John Solomon and the team.
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Chapter 8: What is the role of Moms for Liberty in the ongoing cultural battles?
We've also got Marine Corps 250 out of Camp Pendleton, Amanda Head and the team out there.
And, of course, I'm here for the next couple of days to talk to the conservatives and the grassroots conservatives in the Lone Star State to figure out the Lone Star State is supposed to be the railhead of MAGA, but the folks here don't have time to even much help us on the national level because you're trying to turn around Texas.
Yeah, no, the people of the state of Texas love President Trump. They vote for bold Republican leadership. They deserve bold Republican leadership.
But instead of Texas leading the fight to lock arms with President Trump and make sure his agenda is not just passed, but passed with as big and a maximum of an impact as possible, the failed liberal establishment in the Texas government is forcing Texas taxpayers to basically fund the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris agenda, even though they've been absolutely routed at the ballot box.
Outrageous. Okay, big geopolitical news today. Zelensky's at the White House at 1 o'clock for this massive discussion about providing Tomahawk missiles and other offensive capabilities to the Ukrainians in the Ukraine war against the Russians. President Trump's talked to Putin. We're going to get all that. We want to go now. I think we've got it.
The Council on Foreign Relations, our own Dr. Peter Navarro is giving an address about the trade policy and I think particularly going to delve in to this economic war against China. Let's go to the Council on Foreign Relations, Peter Navarro. After all, it's not every day I get to speak before an audience that has opposed nearly every policy I've ever helped advance in the White House.
But let's be honest with each other. CFR has been uniformly anti-tariff and anti-Trump. and highly skeptical of an America-first foreign policy that in truth is restoring our trade balance, rebuilding our industrial base, strengthening alliances like NATO, keeping, and as we just saw in the Middle East, negotiating the broader peace, and reasserting American sovereignty on the world stage.
So let's ask ourselves the obvious question, how did the Gulf between the Council on Foreign Relations and Trump world grow so wide. If you ask an AI search engine, try this, I did, it will tell you that the Council on Foreign Relations embodies an establishment technocratic and globalist ideology, one comfortably wedded with Wall Street and the multinational corporations that love open borders.
cheap offshore labor, and an endless stream of subsidized imported goods. By contrast, the Trump administration since 2017 has stood squarely with the people who make and grow things in this country, our farmers and ranchers, our manufacturers and workers. What many in this audience dismiss as populism or nationalism simply means
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