Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors over his handling of classified information. Under the agreement, which remains subject to court approval, Bolton will plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive national security information. He will be required to pay a $2.25 million fine and faces a possible sentence ranging from no prison time to five years.
Bolton served as national security adviser during Trump's first administration from 2018 to 2019. After leaving the White House, he became a prominent critic of the president and published a memoir titled "The Room Where It Happened" in 2020. The Justice Department attempted to block the book's publication on national security grounds before it was ultimately released.
The charges filed in October 2025 relate to notes and diary entries Bolton created during his tenure as national security adviser. Prosecutors alleged a pattern of mishandling classified material found in diaries stored on a computer in his Bethesda, Maryland home and in his Washington DC office spanning from April 2018 through August 2025. An August raid recovered materials including briefings about weapons of mass destruction, intelligence on foreign adversaries' leadership, and information on foreign policy relations.
Bolton is represented by attorney Abbe Lowell, who has argued that the notes constituted memoirs rather than officially classified documents and that the timing of the prosecution was politically motivated. Bolton is scheduled to appear in court to enter his guilty plea on June 26.
The charges against Bolton came as part of a broader Justice Department campaign against Trump's critics. The department filed federal charges against several prominent opponents of the former president in October 2025. Trump stated at the time that he was unaware of the charges against Bolton, though he characterized his former adviser as a "bad guy."
Bolton's 2020 memoir contained critical accounts of Trump's leadership and foreign policy decisions. The book detailed instances where Bolton claimed Trump sought to overturn presidential term limits, praised China's construction of detention camps, and asked China's leader Xi Jinping to help secure his reelection through increased purchases of American agricultural products.
Other high-profile prosecutions of Trump's perceived political adversaries, including cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, have encountered legal obstacles and faced widespread accusations of political motivation. The plea agreement allows Bolton to avoid a trial while acknowledging wrongdoing in his retention of classified materials after leaving government service. The Justice Department declined to comment on the case.