Topline
John Bolton, a former national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term who later emerged as a fierce critic of him, pleaded guilty to retaining classified information Friday, a win for Trump’s Justice Department as it prosecutes perceived political foes of the president.
Key Facts
Bolton pleaded guilty to one count of illegally retaining classified information, after prosecutors issued an 18-count indictment that accused him of keeping more than 1,000 pages of notes chronicling national security information and sharing them with his wife and daughter.
Under his plea deal, Bolton faces up to five years in prison and he has agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine, though the Associated Press reported the deal could help him avoid a prison sentence altogether.
Bolton is set to be sentenced Oct. 28 by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang at a federal district court in Maryland.
When asked by the judge if he was guilty of the offense, Bolton said, “I am your honor, and I’m sorry for it.”
Bolton originally pleaded not guilty to the 18 counts in October, saying at the time he was the “latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those [Trump] deems to be his enemies.”
what was bolton accused of?
Bolton was indicted in October, and prosecutors accused him of sharing “diary-like” summaries of his work as national security adviser with relatives, reported to be his wife and daughter, from a personal email account. Authorities said the email account was later subject to a hack by someone believed to be linked to the Iranian government. Among the messages was information about intelligence on former adversaries and cover actions conducted by the government, the indictment alleged. Prosecutors said Bolton sent a document to a family member and followed it up with the message, “None of which we talk about!!!,” to which a recipient responded, “Shhhhh.” FBI agents also raided his Washington office and his Bethesda, Maryland home and seized information designated classified or secret.
tangent
Bolton’s October indictment came shortly after two other Trump foes—former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James—were indicted in separate cases. Both the Comey and James charges were dismissed after a federal judge ruled Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally who had no prior prosecutorial experience, was unlawfully appointed as a U.S. attorney. Comey, though, was indicted again in April over an Instagram post he made last year depicting seashells spelling out the letters “86 47,” which Trump and his administration have viewed as a call to kill the president. Some legal experts, though, have considered the case against Bolton to be more serious, while observers have considered the efforts to prosecute James and Comey as politically motivated.
key background
Bolton is a longtime national security expert and attorney who has served in various Republican presidential administrations, spanning Ronald Reagan to Trump. He served as a national security adviser to Trump between 2018 and 2019. Trump fired Bolton in September 2019, citing “many” disagreements on national security issues, though Bolton claimed he resigned. After leaving the Trump administration, Bolton published a scathing book about his tenure in 2020 titled “The Room Where It Happened,” containing a litany of allegations against Trump. In the book, Bolton described Trump as “stunningly uninformed” about how to run the White House and manage global affairs, also accusing him of offering “personal favors to dictators he liked.” Bolton said Trump was primarily concerned with staying in office, writing he was “hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”
further reading
John Bolton Pleads Not Guilty—Here’s Why His Charges Are More Serious Than Other Trump Foes (Forbes)
