By Katelyn Polantz, Zachary Cohen, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — Federal investigators had reason to believe they would find classified records in a search of John Bolton’s Maryland home last month partly because of what they had learned about a foreign adversary hacking his email years ago, according to a search warrant affidavit released Friday.

Information around the hack could become a central part of the case that investigators have been working on for years, if Bolton were to be charged with a crime, the search warrant suggests.

Bolton was a national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term and a longtime war hawk and foreign policy specialist whom Trump now loathes. He faces no criminal charges at this time.

The FBI’s discussion of the hack of Bolton’s AOL account in the affidavit covers several paragraphs, though the entirety of that section of the affidavit is redacted, except for its introductory headline: “Hack of Bolton AOL Account by Foreign Entity.”

The inclusion of the section about the hack indicates that it has become a key reason for investigators to believe Bolton may have violated laws that prohibit the unsecured keeping or sharing of national defense and classified records following his departure from the White House in the fall of 2019.

The FBI’s search affidavit also discusses his public commentary about other politicians needing to protect classified records and his work on a manuscript in 2020 that he published that year as a deeply critical look inside the Trump White House.

In addition to the new court record, a source familiar with the investigation has told CNN that intelligence related to the hack – collected overseas by the CIA years ago – provided the basis for the warrant to search Bolton’s house.

The US intelligence community believes Bolton’s emails had hallmarks of being intercepted by China, Russia or Iran, according to a source familiar with the matter. Of those three countries, Iran was considered the top suspect, the source said, though it remains unclear if investigators ever concluded whom the exact culprit was.

During the original investigation, US officials conducted a review of the IT infrastructure of the White House complex and that led to some red flags about Bolton’s emails, the source told CNN.

This year, CIA Director John Ratcliffe gave FBI Director Kash Patel limited access to the CIA-collected intelligence.

The newly released search warrant affidavit also describes how federal agents have collected records about communications between Bolton and classified records specialist Ellen Knight on the pre-publication review of Bolton’s book.

Knight met with Bolton in February 2020 to walk through parts of the manuscript where she found classified information, and Bolton “appeared to acknowledge” a need to change that part of his writings to remove the classified information, according to the affidavit. Knight had also provided a photocopy of notes Bolton took at their meeting.

The affidavit suggests the discussions over what was in Bolton’s manuscript are a core part of the case investigators are working on before a federal grand jury.

The back-and-forth between Knight and Bolton was part of a court case over the publication of the book in the summer of 2020, which the Trump administration tried to oppose. But the search affidavit provides more detail about Knight’s alleged interactions with Bolton directly than what was previously disclosed. Ultimately, she worked with Bolton to remove the classified information from the manuscript before publication, but the Trump administration still tried to block the sales of the book, which a judge refused to do, because Bolton hadn’t received a full, formal sign off from the federal government.

Bolton has not been charged with a crime.

The records found in the search of his home were “ordinary” and “nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Ambassador Bolton,” Bolton’s attorney Abbe Lowell said last week.

In the FBI’s search, “the materials taken included documents that had previously been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Ambassador Bolton’s book and are the kinds of records that would be kept by a 40-year career serving at the State Department, as an Assistant Attorney General, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, and National Security Advisor,” Lowell added on Friday in response to a request for comment on the affidavit.

The affidavit also described how Bolton had frequently spoken publicly, including on cable news, about how to handle classified information, criticizing other politicians like Hillary Clinton, which indicates his knowledge of the rules around classified records, the agent said.

The disclosures and new release of an affidavit came after CNN and other media outlets sued for access to the records.

In the search in August, investigators seized documents related to Trump and “allied strikes,” as well as phones, computers and hard drives.

Federal investigators also searched Bolton’s office in downtown Washington, DC. Media outlets are also seeking access to the court records related to that search.

CNN’s Evan Perez contributed to this report.

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