Could John Bolton go to jail?

John Bolton after a long career serving different presidents and building a reputation as a hard-man security and foreign policy warrior, is potentially in a lot of trouble with the law. He is being accused of publishing classified information in his recent mmeoir. It's a classic move by an administration that doesn't like being attacked by a former member of the cabinet and generally these sort of counter-punches end up going away. But could Bolton go to jail? The judge involved in the Justice Department case against Bolton declined to stop publication of the memoir, "The Room Where It Happened", but did conclude that the former national security adviser had deliberately flouted the non-disclosure agreement he had signed when he was appointed. A grand jury is now looking into the judge's decision to see if Bolton should face criminal charges. It would be a sweet moment for Trump if Bolton were to be charged because the president has a very simple notion of what is and what isn't classified information. In his view which he has expressed on several occasions is that EVERYTHING he, the president, says to his officials and advisers is by its very nature top secret. Everything. That means that when Bolton wrote what Trump said to him, whatever it was, that's classified. Therefore he, Bolton, is guilty of revealing classified information. Somehow I doubt a grand jury would go along with that. The judge just said that it looked like Bolton was in breach of his non-disclosure agreement, not that he had revealed secrets in breach of national security. Nothing that has come out so far from Bolton's book looks as if he has revealed things that nobody knew about. But if the Justice Department case against him is going to revolve around the legal argument that to betray Trump by writing nasty things about him is the same as breaching national security rules then it could be a long and complex court case.