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Ex-President Donald Trump has repeatedly shown his desire to see opponents probed, applying pressure on the DOJ to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

"We cannot postpone any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," the leader stated recently in a social media message.

"I was impeached twice, and indicted me (5 times!)" he said, mentioning the multiple legal proceedings he encountered after leaving the White House in 2021 and James's lawsuit.

Both have since been indicted, in situations that many experts have said appear to be politically motivated and challenging to succeed in court.

But the most recent charges against a presidential opponent, former national security adviser John Bolton, stand apart, legal experts and ex-prosecutors say.

"I would say, contrasting Bolton's case to Comey's is like equating two different things," said Mark Lesko, a former acting US attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

This Details of the Legal Situation

Bolton has been criminally indicted on federal charges pertaining to the alleged improper handling of classified information. After leaving the White House in 2019, he has become a outspoken Trump critic, even to call him "stunningly uninformed" and unsuitable for office in his memoir.

Specialists contend that while there may be political reasons to go after Bolton, the methods used to secure an charge and the proof compiled against him suggest a potentially more substantial case than the Justice Department presented against Comey.

"This misconduct that's being alleged is both more serious and seems to have taken place over a significant duration," commented Carissa Byrne Hessick, a academic at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Throughout his time as Trump's security advisor, and following his 2019 White House exit, prosecutors claimed that Bolton placed the nation at risk by improperly retaining and transmitting sensitive documents to relatives using insecure means, including AOL. Several of the documents were labeled top secret.

The indictment states that at one point a unauthorized user accessed to Bolton's system where documents were kept and transmitted an seeming warning to cause "the largest scandal since Hillary [Clinton]'s emails were released".

Bolton pleaded not guilty during a court appearance on Friday to eighteen separate charges of improperly handling classified information.

Political Motivation or a Strong Legal Argument?

The schedule of his indictment - arriving on the heels of allegations against Comey - has renewed concerns about external influence on the justice system.

Trump once implied Bolton belonged in prison, and described him a "disreputable person". Bolton, for his part, authored a book about his time in the Trump administration that was sharply negative of the president.

"There's no question that the timing of this charge, when combined with additional cases, has prompted questions about the validity of these allegations, and why these charges are being filed at this time," stated Jamil Jaffer, creator and executive director of the National Security Institute.

However, he continued, "if the Justice Department is capable to prove the allegations stated and demonstrate the material is correctly designated, his conduct may certainly have broken the law".

Charging such a high-ranking figure for mishandling sensitive materials is "uncommon" but not without precedent, noted Carrie Cordero, a expert at the Center for a New American Security.

"Situations that involve sensitive materials present difficulties to try, but they can and are brought against equally junior and senior personnel, from time to time," she said.

Parallels to Investigations into Trump and President

Trump likewise faced charges of improperly storing sensitive materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and hindering their recovery, but that case was eventually thrown out by a federal judge and negated by his return as president.

A special counsel additionally found that former President Joe Biden wrongfully maintained sensitive materials from his time as second-in-command, but failed to criminally charge him.

Bolton's case shares characteristics to Biden's classified documents matters, said Mr Lesko, who previously held a senior security position at the Justice Department.

Rigorous protocols govern the management of sensitive materials. To secure a guilty verdict, the prosecution must prove that Bolton knew the material he was sending was classified, and he had to knowingly transmit it to someone not entitled to obtain it.

"Because of the classified nature of the information at issue in this matter, we don't have a great deal of details about why the government believes things like the diary entries and the additional material he communicated by email, and why there were classified," explained Mr Jaffer.

A More Conventional Legal Action

The process by which the Justice Department initiated this case will be closely examined, after Trump publicly expressed his wish to see his critics charged and some of those charges came to fruition.

But Mr Lesko said in Bolton's case, authorities appear to have followed protocol.

"This Bolton prosecution and eventually the charge appeared to have observed the regular process including the rules and norms within the DOJ," he stated.

In contrast to Comey's short, two-page indictment, Bolton's was a increasingly "conventional" filing that "clearly outlines the details concerning the circumstances and situation here," Mr Lesko commented.

"It seems reasonably aligned with a series of precedents... where public servants mishandled and transmitted classified material."