The Trump critic was indicted in October on 18 charges.
Former Trump adviser John Bolton reaches plea deal in documents case
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a fierce critic of President Donald Trump, has reached a plea deal in the criminal case over his handling of classified information.
John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during President Donald Trump‘s first administration, admitted in federal court that he mishandled national security information, Reuters reported.
Bolton, 77, who became a Trump critic after working for him from 2018 to 2019, pleaded guilty on June 26 to one count of retaining national security information. He reached a plea deal earlier this month. His sentencing is set for Oct. 28.
Bolton faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and up to three years of supervised release, according to Kelly Hayes, the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, who spoke outside the courthouse after Bolton’s court appearance.
“He will also pay a fine of $2.25 million and will forfeit his pension under the Hiss Act,” Hayes said. The law denies pensions to federal employees convicted of national security crimes.Â
“No one is above the law, and I hope that this prosecution sends a clear message that we will vigorously investigate and prosecute individuals who violate our national security laws without fear and without favor,” Hayes said.Â
A federal grand jury indicted Bolton in October on eight counts of transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of retaining national defense information. Most of the information in question was classified as top secret, according to the indictment.
The indictment said Bolton “abused his position” as national security adviser by “sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities” on the job with two relatives who lived in his home but were not named in the indictment.
The indictment said Bolton kept handwritten notes of his days and then sent diary-like entries to these relatives using a commercial messaging application, and sent other top secret information to them using his personal email accounts hosted by AOL and Google.
“Today, Ambassador Bolton did what real leaders do,” Abbe Lowell, his lawyer, said in a statement. “He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information.”
Lowell also took a shot at Trump’s 2023 indictment related to storing boxes of classified documents from his first term at Mar-a-Lago. He said Bolton “kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”
Trump’s documents case was dismissed at the Justice Department’s request because of its policy against prosecuting a sitting president.Â
USA TODAY attempted to reach Bolton for comment.
Bolton’s indictment cited comments he’d made to journalists in 2025 after it was revealed that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and other high-ranking Trump administration officials discussed an attack in the Middle East on the messaging app Signal.
“What were they doing off of secure government channels?” Bolton asked. “That is the original sin here. That is the question neither one of them has yet answered.”
Contributing: Bart Jansen, Josh Meyer, Aysha Bagchi.