Bolton expected – John Bolton, former national security adviser under Donald Trump, is expected to plead guilty to illegal retention of sensitive national security documents and pay a fine of more than $2 million, with a court hearing set for June 26.
By the time a date appears on a court docket, the story stops being a debate and starts being math: how many counts, how much time, and what it will cost.
John Bolton—President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-adversary—is expected to plead guilty over the mishandling of sensitive national security documents, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Bolton intends to plead guilty to one felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, according to one of the sources. He has also agreed to pay a more than $2 million fine, according to one of the sources.
A conviction on one count of illegal retention carries a sentence between 0 and 60 months in prison.
The Justice Department declined to comment and referred CNN to the court docket, which indicates a hearing was set for June 26.
The plea deal lands months after prosecutors in Maryland charged Bolton over allegations tied to his home and his private writings—keeping diary entries from the first Trump White House in his home.
Prosecutors accused Bolton of sharing “more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities” through his personal email account with two unauthorized individuals. CNN has reported those individuals are Bolton’s wife and daughter. The alleged transmission of classified information is not part of the charges he expects to plead guilty to.
Bolton was originally charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information. He served for one year in the first Trump administration.
Even as the legal fight moved through federal hands. Trump kept returning to the case with a familiar insistence—saying Bolton should have been arrested over his 2020 memoir. which was highly critical of the president. Trump claimed Bolton should have gone to jail because classified information was contained in the book.
But in contrast to some of Trump’s other perceived adversaries—such as FBI Director James Comey and the now-dismissed case against New York Attorney General Letitia James—Bolton’s case has maintained the support of career prosecutors and investigators. people briefed on the matter previously told CNN.
Trump’s first Justice Department opened criminal and civil investigations into the book in 2020, but it was closed within a year. The FBI opened a new inquiry into Bolton the next year, still during the Biden presidency, after his email was breached by suspected Iranian hackers.
Investigators discovered “diary-like entries” containing top secret information from his time as national security advisor.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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