John Bolton, former Trump national security adviser, pleads guilty in classified documents case

Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton leaves federal court in October 2025 in Greenbelt, Md. Alex Kent/Getty Images hide caption

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John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Trump who became a staunch critic, pleaded guilty Friday for mishandling classified information.

Bolton, wearing a dark suit, stood before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang at the federal district court in Greenbelt, Md., outside Washington, D.C.

He solemnly entered his plea, agreeing with federal prosecutors' summary of his actions. "And I am sorry for it," he told the court.

Under the plea agreement, Bolton could serve up to five years in federal prison and would have to pay a fine of $2.25 million — half of which would have to be paid within five days of his sentencing. He will also forgo any retirement benefits related to his work with the government, for himself or his family.

Judge Chuang, an appointee of President Barack Obama, scheduled a sentencing hearing on Oct. 28. Bolton was released and allowed to return home in the meantime.

He was indicted last October on 18 criminal counts for retention and transmission of national defense information. Had he gone to trial, he would have faced several years in prison.

In court Friday, Bolton confessed and pleaded guilty to just one of the 18 counts he was originally charged with: the retention of national defense information.

"Today, Ambassador Bolton did what real leaders do. He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information," said his lawyer in the case, Abbe Lowell.

Federal prosecutors said Bolton regularly took handwritten notes including information about national defense information and about daily meetings with U.S. intelligence and military officials or with foreign leaders.

He would then send that sensitive and often highly classified information to two family members via texts or an AOL email account. Prosecutors said Bolton shared more than a thousand pages detailing these daily activities.

After Bolton left the Trump administration in 2019, hackers believed to be associated with the Iranian government gained access to the personal email account that he used to send this information — including some of that national defense information, federal prosecutors said.

Bolton had previously said he believed this case was motivated by Trump's desire for revenge for his past criticism of the president. It's an accusation the administration has also faced for its attempts to prosecute other Trump critics, including former FBI director James Comey and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. The administration has denied these accusations and said it is following the law.

(The initial cases against Comey and James were dropped. But Comey was indicted a second time for a supposed threatening Instagram post against Trump.)

Stacey Young, a former DOJ attorney, says the Bolton case is legitimate, and different from those other "vindictive cases DOJ has pursued." Young is now the executive director and founder of Justice Connection, an organization of former DOJ staffers.

"Naturally, the public has been skeptical of whether the charges brought against [Bolton] are indeed legitimate," Young said. "The fact that the public has lost its trust in the Department of Justice is at issue with this case. After seeing DOJ leadership repeatedly bow to President Trump's orders to prosecute his enemies, it's hard for the public to separate this case from the vindictive and selective prosecutions we've seen that ... violate the Constitution."

Michael O'Hanlon, who specializes in American national security policy at the Brookings Institution, agreed Bolton's case had merit.

"This is a prominent public official who did make some mistakes and should have known better … and deserved some kind of punishment as a result," he said.

Notably, Trump avoided punishment for his own mishandling of classified documents. In 2022, the FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after he left office and found he was keeping classified information in multiple rooms.

The case against him was eventually thrown out by U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who Trump appointed in his first term.