Report: John Bolton Agrees to Plea Deal in High-Profile National Security Case
“He intends to plead guilty to one felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security information, according to one of the sources. He has also agreed to pay a more than $2 million fine …”
Three sources told CNN that John Bolton, who served for one year as national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term, has agreed to a plea deal over charges of mishandling sensitive national security information. A hearing is scheduled for June 26.
CNN reported:
He intends to plead guilty to one felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security information, 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 could come with a sentence between 0 and 60 months in prison.
…
The plea deal comes months after the top Trump foe was charged by prosecutors in Maryland for allegedly 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, who CNN has reported are his wife and daughter. The alleged transmission of classified information isn’t part of the charges he expects to plead guilty to.
His guilty plea won’t include charges related to the allegation that Bolton took home or shared classified documents — only that he wrote down sensitive national security information as part of his personal papers.
Perhaps the reason he allegedly agreed to such a substantial fine was to avoid serving time in prison.
Two anonymous sources told Reuters, “the deal alleges no wrongdoing with regard to Bolton’s book, but that Bolton was acknowledging that he made a mistake.”
According to several media outlets, former National Security Advisor during President Donald J. Trump's first term, John Bolton, will plead guilty to illegal retention of classified information in a plea deal that would see 17 other charges dismissed and order him to pay a $2.25… pic.twitter.com/TXQNy535Ze
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 4, 2026
Bolton was indicted in October and charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information. He took to the airwaves to compare Trump to Stalin and claimed he was the “latest target in weaponizing the DOJ to charge those he deems his enemies.”
While the plea deal wipes away 17 of the original counts, Bolton could still be on the hook for a substantial $2.25 million penalty if CNN’s reporting proves accurate.
When John Bolton was indicted last October, he compared Trump to Stalin and said he was the "latest target in weaponizing the DOJ to charge those he deems his enemies."
Today, he plead guilty. pic.twitter.com/7BJXO3Mneq
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 4, 2026
In August of last year, the FBI dramatically raided Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home as well as his Washington, D.C., office.
This was soooooooooooo
Good I have to repost!
Bolton home raid! pic.twitter.com/GT1UfggrTY— Fletch17 (@RealFletch17) June 5, 2026
You may recall that Trump famously fired Bolton in September 2019 after months of policy disagreements and personal friction. The two men frequently clashed over foreign policy, disagreeing on issues ranging from Afghanistan and Iran to North Korea and Venezuela. Trump rejected Bolton’s interventionist, hawkish worldview and characterized him as a “warmonger.” By the time Bolton was shown the door, their differences on national security and foreign affairs had become impossible to reconcile.
Trump announced the dismissal in a social media post, writing that he had informed Bolton the previous night that his services were no longer needed. Bolton later disputed the characterization, saying he had offered to resign.
Since leaving the administration, Bolton has become one of Trump’s most outspoken critics.
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2019
Bolton published a memoir in 2020 titled “The Room Where It Happened,” in which he delivered a blistering critique of the president.
Reuters reported that the Trump DOJ tried “unsuccessfully” to block publication of Bolton’s book “alleging it contained classified information.”
The book prompted Trump’s Justice Department to open criminal and civil investigations in 2020, but both were closed within a year.
However, in 2021, during the Biden administration, the FBI opened a new investigation into Bolton after suspected Iranian hackers breached his personal email account. According to CNN, investigators reviewing the compromised emails discovered “‘diary-like entries’ containing top-secret information from his time as national security adviser.”
Few figures have traveled a stranger political path than Bolton. He entered the Trump administration as one of the most influential voices on national security, left as a bitter adversary, and built a post-White House career attacking the president at nearly every turn. Now, after years of insisting he was the target of political persecution, he appears poised to resolve the case by pleading guilty to a felony count tied to his handling of sensitive national security information.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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Comments
Better than he deserves.
But I was assured that Bolton was innocent????
In our justice system a guilty plea proves nothing. Literally every day people plead guilty to crimes they never committed, because it’s their best option available. And yes, they perjure themselves by allocuting to false offenses, with the explicit and conscious collusion of prosecutors and judges. So it may very well be the case that he’s innocent; to know whether it’s so in a specific case you have to know the facts in that case. The guilty plea is neither here nor there.
Posting in the daytime. Must be your day off.🥰💕
Wouldn’t the part about ‘knowing the facts of a specific case’ also apply to a trial outcome of guilty or innocent? Even ‘knowing’ the particular facts juries can and have found the ‘innocent’ to be guilty and the ‘guilty’ to be innocent or sometimes reach no unanimous decision.
I’d watch who actually comes up with the money for that fine. The Deep State protects its own.
Couldn’t happen to a better war mongering fool. Part of his guilty Plea should have been that he’ll wear a gag all waking hours.
No, he should be forced to shave that disgusting mustache.
I want to point out something so obvious that the media will miss it. This is the NORMAL process for “former administration official walks off with classified material” but on a spectrum.
-Bob wanders off with a few docs caught accidentally in a binder, FBI visits, they track them down and sends them back. Minor ding, no charges.
-Bob intentionally takes something that’s lightly classified, too much annoyance to drag it back, administration declassifies it. No charges.
-Bob intentionally takes something serious, gets asked to send it back, gets quiet FBI raid to *take* it back, gets told if he makes a fuss, charges will follow. He doesn’t, they don’t.
–(this case) Bob takes a bunch of stuff that really was seriously classified, shares it with family, has foreign intel steal it, publishes it in a book, winds up with a FBI raid to drag it back and some more stuff they didn’t realize he had, pleads guilty because a trial would put him in prison for decades.
–(and of course the most serious) President Bob takes documents home that he’s declassified, next administration throws an absolute hissy fit, proceeds to raid Former President Bob’s house, takes the declassifed docs back, claims they are now ex post facto classified, tries to use a fake prosecutor to pursue a baseless criminal case…sound familiar?
I bet all those swamp critters are really regretting the “Get Trump” BS they pulled. I can’t wait to see who goes down for the J6 production.
There is no justice. He’s rich; he can just write a check and keep on keepin’ on.
🤬
Will he lose his USA government pension?
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