Search Articles
(CN) — Former National Security Adviser John Bolton plans to plead guilty to a single charge of retaining classified information in a private diary during his time in the Trump administration between 2018-19.
Bolton initially faced 18 federal charges related to his documenting of his own daily activities at the White House, which he shared with two family members to then use in his memoir, “The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir.”
Bolton previously pleaded not guilty to the charges at his initial arraignment on Oct. 17, 2025.
Under the agreement, Bolton could avoid jail time — each of the 18 felony counts carried a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison — but face a $2.25 million fine. Any sentence would be ultimately up to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, but under the agreement any prison time would be capped at five years.
The agreement was first reported by CNN.
Chuang, a Barack Obama appointee, scheduled a re-arraignment at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, for June 26. Chuang must approve the plea deal before it can be finalized.
A federal grand jury in the U.S. District of Maryland approved the 18-count indictment on Oct. 16 — eight counts of transmission of national defense information and another 10 courts of retention of national defense information — based on Bolton’s reported sharing of more than a thousand pages of classified information, including top secret documents, with two individuals between April 9, 2018 and Aug. 22, 2025.
According to prosecutors in the 26-page indictment, after Bolton left his position in the White House, he failed to inform government personnel that he had sent national defense and classified information to the two unnamed individuals over unsecured email and messaging services, or that such information was stored on personal devices belonging to him and the two others.
At some point between September 2019 and July 2021, Bolton’s personal email was hacked by Iran, according to prosecutors, who gained access to the classified and national defense information in the account.
On July 6, 2021, a representative for Bolton notified the FBI about the hack, but reportedly did not say the account contained classified information or that Bolton had shared the information.
The hacker emailed Bolton a threatening message on July 25, referencing his then-recently published memoir, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," warning that if he did not cooperate, the hacker would “disseminate the expurgated sections” of the book.
“This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side! Contact me before it’s too late,” the hacker purportedly told Bolton.
The indictment does not detail the results of Bolton’s extortion.
Bolton had submitted drafts of the book to the National Security Council to review for any classified information, which concluded that his initial draft contained “significant amounts of highly classified information” that Bolton removed before publication.
In late 2020, the Trump administration sued Bolton to block publication of his book, but Bolton reached a settlement with former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department in June 2021, in which he agreed to provide all the materials in his possession, including drafts of his book, that may contain classified information.
Bolton’s lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell of Lowell & Associates did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Justice Department.
When Bolton was indicted in October, the case seemed to follow a pattern of President Donald Trump’s political enemies facing legal retribution for opposing Trump, following the initial case against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
However, Bolton’s case appeared to have to support of career prosecutors in the Justice Department, unlike Comey and James’ cases, which were thrown out of court by federal judges before prosecutors in North Carolina brought a second case against Comey. The charges were obtained by veteran national security prosecutor Thomas Sullivan and endorsed by Kelly O. Hayes, who Trump tapped for Maryland’s top prosecutor last February.
Follow @Ryan_KnappySubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.
