By Katelyn Polantz, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN
(CNN) — Senior Justice Department leaders are advocating for a charge against President Donald Trump’s former adviser-turned-critic John Bolton this week, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
Currently, the prosecutors think they could bring a stronger case by the end of the year against Bolton over the mishandling of national security documents, rather than pushing for a charge at this time.
It comes as Trump has called for the department to prosecute his political opponents, and as Justice Department prosecutors are looking at charging another adversary, former FBI Director Jim Comey.
An attorney from the deputy attorney general’s office has been pressing the Maryland US attorney’s office this week to charge Bolton on or before Friday, according to the sources.
But prosecutors from the office and a top national security prosecutor from the Justice Department in Washington, DC, have pushed back on what they see as a too-aggressive timeline for a case to come together. One Justice Department official was considering pulling prosecutors off the case out of opposition to the deputy attorney general’s instruction this week.
Investigators previously collected many records from his home and office, some marked as classified, and they may need to take additional steps examining the evidence and interviewing witnesses before a case could be charged, the source told CNN.
Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has repeatedly said in recent public statements responding to the investigative activity that the records the former national security adviser had would have been typical of those kept by a long-time government official.
“The documents with classification markings from the period 1998 – 2006 date back to Amb. Bolton’s time in the George W. Bush Administration,” Lowell said in a statement on Wednesday. “An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Ambassador Bolton.”
The Justice Department and lawyers for Bolton did not respond to requests for comment.
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