John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count of unlawfully retaining classified information, resolving a criminal case stemming from his mishandling of sensitive national security records after leaving office.
Under the plea agreement, Bolton admitted to retaining classified information contained in a private diary entry, a charge carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He also agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine, an amount nearly equivalent to the sales of his 2020 memoir that was heavily critical of the first Trump administration.
The agreement significantly narrowed the case after Bolton had initially pleaded not guilty to an 18-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury last fall.
Federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland had accused Bolton of illegally retaining more than 1,000 pages of national defense information, including documents marked “secret” and “top secret,” and transmitting classified material through personal email and messaging accounts. Prosecutors alleged the information was shared with unauthorized family members, including his wife and daughter. The plea agreement does not require Bolton to admit to leaking classified information to the media or a foreign government.
The investigation spanned two presidential administrations. Although the Biden administration dropped an initial inquiry related to Bolton’s memoir, The Room Where It Happened, in June 2021, prosecutors took a new course after it was discovered that hackers, believed to be affiliated with Iran, accessed Bolton’s email account, revealing private journal entries that allegedly contained classified information from his time as national security adviser.
The investigation gained steam following former President Joe Biden’s departure in early 2025, culminating in FBI searches of Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington office in August of that year, before a federal grand jury indicted him in October.
The guilty plea also delivers a notable courtroom victory for the Trump administration’s DOJ, which has pursued several high-profile investigations of current and former public officials in recent months with mixed results.
Last year, two of the administration’s most closely watched prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James collapsed after a federal judge ruled that the acting U.S. attorney who brought the cases in the Eastern District of Virginia had been unlawfully appointed.
Notably, Bolton’s lead counsel, Abbe Lowell, has likewise represented Comey and James in their respective criminal cases brought by the Trump administration. He previously defended Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in his firearms and tax-related criminal cases.
The DOJ has since brought a separate case against Comey in North Carolina, charging him with threatening the president over a now-deleted Instagram post showing seashells arranged to spell “86 47.” Prosecutors allege the numbers constituted a threat against the 47th president, while Comey has denied any criminal intent.
JOHN BOLTON REACHES PLEA DEAL IN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS CASE
Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 before becoming one of the president’s most outspoken Republican critics, avoids the prospect of a lengthy trial and the possibility of decades in prison had he been convicted on all 18 counts.
“I was never much of a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said earlier this month. “He’s a bad guy, John Bolton, he’s a dirty guy, and we caught him.”