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Trump Preparing To Host Ukraine's Zelenskyy At White House; Bolton Pleads Not Guilty To All Charges In 18-Count Indictment. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 17, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: -- would then be used in a fashion that would really put at risk everything that's out there for the Russians. And they would also cause some difficulty in our defense industrial base. So that's why President Trump said what he said.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Colonel Cedric Leighton, always great to see you. Thanks for breaking it down for us. We do appreciate it.

LEIGHTON: You bet.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it's interesting because I was the Pentagon correspondent during the Operation Desert Storm, the war against Saddam Hussein --

BROWN: Of course.

BLITZER: -- when -- when the U.S. began using Tomahawk cruise missiles and they were so effective in defeating Saddam Hussein's military. And so there's a lot -- lot of good history as far as these Tomahawk cruise missiles are concerned.

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: The next hour of The Situation Room starts right now.

BROWN: Happening now, breaking news. President Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, is set to make his first appearance before a federal judge today following a grand jury indictment. He is the third Trump opponent to face federal charges in a matter of weeks.

BLITZER: We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown. And you're in The Situation Room.

And we're following the breaking news. The former national security adviser, Ambassador John Bolton, is set to appear before a federal judge at any minute, one day after being indicted by a federal grand jury. He's facing 18 counts of mishandling classified information. Pamela?

BROWN: And prosecutors are alleging, Wolf, that Bolton kept and shared classified information. The FBI searched his home, which you can see here in August. He is the third Trump political foe to be indicted in the past month. So let's bring in CNN's Katelyn Polantz. She's been following this story every step of the way and joins us live from the federal courthouse in Maryland, where John Bolton could appear before a judge at any moment. So bring us there, Katelyn.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Truly, any moment. Everybody is assembled inside the courtroom right now. I was just over there inside the courthouse. It's Bolton, his defense lawyers, the prosecutors, we saw them all head in. The judge who is going to be overseeing this case, his name is Ted Chuang, he was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama about a decade ago.

But that's not who is going to be hearing this case today for this initial appearance. So the very first time that Bolton will be facing this indictment and these 18 criminal counts of mishandling or transmitting classified information, that will before a magistrate judge, the chief magistrate judge in this district, someone who generally would see someone at the very first stages of a case where for initial criminal procedures, that judge today, his name is Timothy Sullivan. He's been on the bench for more than a decade as well.

So both judges in this courthouse, pretty experienced judges overseeing this case. We are waiting to see exactly what will happen in court today, though we do expect Bolton to be read the charges that he is facing, be told formally what he is charged with, perhaps given the opportunity at this time to enter his pleading of not guilty, which we expect from him.

He already said in a statement yesterday that he plans to fight these charges. But this is also a moment where we will see what the Justice Department wants to do next. Are they going to ask for some sort of restrictions on John Bolton as he's released and rate -- waiting trial? That will all before the judge today. And we are waiting for these proceedings to start any minute now.

BROWN: All right. I know you'll keep us posted. Katelyn Polantz, thanks so much. Wolf?

BLITZER: We'll see what happens. I want to bring in CNN legal and national security analyst, Carrie Cordero right now. Carrie, from a national security perspective, how serious are these allegations against Ambassador Bolton?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think this is a really serious case and for a few reasons. First of all, the allegations he was charged with the more serious version of the law, which is under what's called the espionage statute, he's not accused of actually giving information directly to foreign nationals or another country, but he's charged under that set of statutes which carries it's the more serious version of mishandling classified information or national defense information.

The indictment is also very detailed and so it goes document by document and lists the type of classification level, some -- in some cases secret, in some cases top secret, even compartmented information from signals intelligence, so really sensitive stuff. And -- and it details that level of information that the government is alleging the documents that he had written and communicated contained.

BLITZER: And I just want to be precise, that it wasn't just top secret information, it was the highest level, SCI, sensitive compartment -- compartmental information which reveals sources and methods for the U.S. Intelligence community. It's the most sensitive information out there.

CORDERO: It is. And so from the intelligence community's perspective, revelation of that information to people who are not trusted and don't have the security clearances could cause exceptionally grave damage to the U.S. national security. So it's really serious allegations.

And the indictment also describes in some detail the type of that sort of information. So in some cases it looks like to me from the indictment it comes from signals intelligence. In other cases from potentially human sources, information from foreign partners is referenced in this indictment.

And so then the argument from the government's perspective is that the release of that information to people who are not trusted and don't have the clearances could potentially jeopardize our international intelligence sharing relationships.

BLITZER: The government is also suggesting one more point that -- that he was sharing this information with his wife and daughter on AOL and at one point supposedly according to the government the Iranians had hacked his AOL account and was -- they were also beginning to get this information.

CORDERO: Right. And so what the indictment says is that he is alleged to have communicated this information again to his family members who are obviously not cleared not in a position to receive that information both on a AOL account and on a Google account. Obviously those are unsecured methods of communication.

And then he has been targeted over a long time by the Iranian government both in terms of this hack and in terms of his own physical security. So there are known and reported threats and he has been targeted by them. So then what happens is because he had communicated according to the government this information in these unsecure methods through e-mail, the argument is that the Iranians then had access to the classified information that he was allegedly communicating.

BLITZER: Yes. Very serious.

BROWN: Well, and John Bolton for his part we should note he denies any wrongdoing. He says that this is retribution from President Trump and we have seen President Trump call for the prosecutions of his political foes. Of course there was that Truth Social post that was then taken down calling for the attorney general to go after Letitia James and James Comey. And so now you have this. How could that factor in?

CORDERO: Yes. So I think I mean it's hard to separate out, you know, the facts of this case and each individual case from this bigger political issue which is that the President has been very open about wanting to use the justice system and use the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies. So I think we have to look at each case individually.

And so when I look at this case versus for example the indictment that was in the Eastern District of Virginia against former director Comey that is very slim just a bare bones indictment doesn't get into the facts of the investigation. And so you read that indictment and it really does appear that there's not much there and the government will have to demonstrate what facts it actually has. This is very different.

This looks like an extensive investigation that was conducted over time. They conducted the physical search in August of his home, devices. The prosecutors in this case have laid out the underlying information. Now the government is going to have to prove a lot in this case. So it's not as simple as if there were just marked documents with actual classifications markings on them.

In this case the government is going to have to make the connections between the documents that Bolton is alleged to have communicated which is his text, his narrative. And then the government and if this actually were to go to trial would have to line that up with the actual intelligence briefings or the actual classified documents.

So it's -- it's not an easy case for the government to make but the indictment does demonstrate that they have a lot of evidence.

BLITZER: We're told he's now in the courtroom so we'll see. We assume he's going to plead not guilty in the face of these -- all these charges that he's facing each one of them potentially could land him 10 years in jail if he's convicted on all 18 counts. He could face potentially 180 years in jail if he's convicted on all 18 counts.

Investigators as you know Carrie from the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, they've been looking into this case since 2021. So what do you make of the fact that these charges are only being brought now once Trump is back in office?

CORDERO: Well again that does -- that piece of it the timing of it does play into whether the President or and or the attorney general really pressured in any way the prosecutors in the District of Maryland where this particular case is and that out of that U.S. attorney's office to make this case.

On the other hand it does look like this, and as you just described, this investigation has gone on for a long time. And it is not completely unusual in the Justice Department for different senior leaders to look at a case and -- and decide that they want to move forward on it.

So there -- there are both of those dynamics at play. We can have both a really long extensive investigation that ended up revealing this damaging allegations against John Bolton and we can also have at the same time this obvious political pressure that this particular Justice Department is engaged in.

BLITZER: Carrie Cordero as usual. Thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Still ahead here in The Situation Room, we're going to go live to Moscow as Russian leader Vladimir Putin looks ahead to a second summit with President Trump and as he keeps a close eye on today's crucial White House meeting with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy who's pushing the U.S. for access to those powerful long range missiles. What President Trump is saying about that request. We'll be right back.

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BROWN: And just a couple of hours President Trump is scheduled to meet with Ukraine's leader at the White House. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is hoping to secure a deal with the White House to help secure a U.S. commitment to sell Tomahawk missiles. The long range weapons are capable of striking deep within Russia.

And while Trump has not taken that possibility of sending them to Ukraine off the table, new CNN reporting indicates he's also not expected to commit to providing them in his meeting with Zelenskyy today, though as we know, that could change based on what happens in the room with the Ukrainians.

And we're also learning that Trump will soon have another face to face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary coming off a two and a half hour phone call with Putin just yesterday. A lot going on, on this front. Let's go live now to CNN's Matthew Chance in Moscow. Matthew, how closely is Moscow watching today's meeting at the White House?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Pam, I think they're watching it very closely indeed. I mean even though publicly the Kremlin says it's not concerned about the possibility of Tomahawk cruise missiles being sent to -- to Ukraine. It says it could handle that it wouldn't have much impact on the battlefield.

It would only cause a diplomatic escalation between the United States and Washington. Even so it has been talking about that possibility of Tomahawks going to Ukraine for some time. We've heard it from Putin we've heard it from other officials as well. So there's clearly a degree of anxiety about it.

And I think it's no coincidence that the -- that the phone call, two and a half hours, the eighth phone call that President Trump and President Putin have had in this second Trump presidential term took place on the eve of this meeting between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy -- Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. It was clearly some kind of last minute sort of attempt intervention by President Putin in the Kremlin to get in President Trump's ear to talk to him about, you know, the -- the risks involved in transferring something like the Tomahawk cruise missile to Ukraine and potentially get him to sort of stand back and step -- step away from that.

He was already quite reluctant and sort of ambiguous about whether he was in favor of giving those Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine or not. I think the hope in the Kremlin is that the -- the inter -- interactive, you know, the interaction on the telephone by President Trump where by President Putin and Trump will have kind of pushed him further away from taking that decision. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Matthew Chance in Moscow, thanks so much. Wolf?

BLITZER: And also happening now, we're seeing more intense clashes between federal agents and anti-ICE protesters on the Chicago -- in the Chicago area. We're going to get a live report. Stand by.

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BLITZER: Not guilty, that's what the former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, Ambassador John Bolton, just did in a federal courtroom in Greenbelt, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., pleading not guilty to all 18 counts. Carrie Cordero, our legal analyst, national security analyst, is with us right now. This is not a surprise.

CORDERO: It's not a surprise. John Bolton indicated in his statement that he was going to defend himself against all of these charges. He is certainly going to argue, as this case plays out, that this was political interference and politically motivated in terms of why he was charged. But just substantively, just want to preview that this type of case that is about the mishandling of national defense information, particularly because the government is documenting all of the different types of classified information that he is allegedly to have revealed and communicated in unsecure ways. This case could go on for quite some time.

Now that he's pled not guilty, that will start the process. But even just to get to, if he -- if he continues to plead not guilty and wants to take this case to trial, we are looking at a very long timeline in terms of his defense team's interaction with the government over the classified information that would be part of the discovery process in this case.

BLITZER: And if I know Abbe Lowell as I do, his defense attorney, they potentially could charge what's called malicious prosecution that the government had political reasons for going after him and it wasn't fair.

CORDERO: They could -- they -- they will certainly make those types of arguments and we'll see how the judge then handles them when this gets up to the district court judge in terms of motions practice. And so there -- there could potentially be that track. But again, different than, for example, the case against former director Comey, this is a very substantive indictment.

And it was also signed by the actual prosecutors in the office. So not just a newly appointed U.S. attorney, as in -- was in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Comey case. There's a lot of substance to this case and there's a lot of investigation. It's really serious allegations.

So although the defense will make those arguments, they also are going to have to engage on the sub, I -- I think they're going to end up having to engage on the substance of this case. I think what they're probably going to argue is that the information wasn't classified.

And so that's going to get into the fact that it doesn't seem based on the indictment so far that John Bolton retained in his house, for example, or was e-mailing actual documents that had the classification markings on them. Instead, what it appears from the government's indictment is that they're arguing that he relayed, he typed up into notes and then he typed that into e-mails and then he relayed that actually to his family members, according to our reporting, that he relayed that information.

And so the government is going to have a pretty extensive process to have to then match up the classified information that the government thinks it came from. And that could be intelligence briefings, that could be notes from meetings that took place in sensitive, you know, in the situation room, actually, in other classified spaces.

BROWN: -- we should note.

CORDERO: Right. The one that's actually classified and that when you walk in, you're only supposed to be a person who's cleared to be in there. And so then, the -- the allegation that then he would take information that he learned in that classified environment and communicate it through commercial e-mail is something that anybody with a security clearance knows you're not supposed to do.

BLITZER: And Carrie, you're cleared to be in our Situation Room.

CORDERO: I am in this one thing.

BROWN: Yes, we're all cleared here. I want to go to Katelyn Polantz, who's right outside that federal courthouse. All right, what's the latest there, Katelyn?

POLANTZ: Well, Pam and Wolf, from the moment that John Bolton walked into that courtroom until now, under 20 minutes, the whole arraignment, initial appearance, it's over. He's entered a pleading of not guilty to those 18 counts of mishandling, keeping in an unsecured way, or transmitting national security information.

What happened at this hearing today? He appeared before a magistrate judge, the chief magistrate judge in this district, a man named Timothy Sullivan, who's been on the bench for more than a decade. And it was short and sweet, all of the things that you would expect in an appearance like this, where the judge asked him if he understood the indictment.

Bolton said that he did. He understood the nature of the charges. He was informed of the -- the indicted charges that are now against him. Bolton was also informed by the judge that he could face 10 years maximum sentence if found guilty of these charges. He understood his rights. And then Bolton firmly said to the judge, he pleads not guilty.

This reporting comes from our producers in the courtroom, Devan Cole and Holmes Lybrand. And they are now waiting to see Bolton exit the courtroom, exit the courthouse, and head on his way. This will be the first appearance before a road to trial.

Abbe Lowell, that very experienced defense attorney here in the Washington area, he is representing Bolton and hasn't tipped his hand yet, as far as I know, on what he's planning to do to fight this case. But they do say that they want to fight the case. And they have said, both Bolton and Abbe Lowell, in statements have said that this information was unclassified and it was shared only with the immediate family.

They believe that this had been investigated and then closed. Bolton himself has said in a statement, he believes this was weaponization by Donald Trump of the Justice Department. But the prosecutors, they are also exiting at this time. And we're waiting to hear more from exactly what went on in this federal courthouse today.

BROWN: All right, Katelyn Polantz, Carrie Cordero, thank you both. Wolf?

BLITZER: Also happening now, several people have been arrested near Chicago as anti-ICE protesters once again gather near an ICE facility. Whitney Wild is on the scene for us. She's there.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we've seen multiple arrests, I'll provide more details on the other side of the break. Back to you.

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