Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of unlawfully retaining classified documents, resolving an 18-count federal indictment brought against him last October, CNN reported Thursday.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Bolton will plead guilty to a single count of illegal retention of national defense information. As part of the agreement, he faces a fine exceeding $2 million and up to 60 months in prison. A federal judge will determine the final sentence at a hearing scheduled for June 26 in U.S. District Court in Maryland.
The plea deal reportedly comes after Bolton was indicted in October 2025 on eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention. Prosecutors alleged he emailed more than 1,000 pages of diary-like notes containing classified material — some marked Top Secret — to family members and kept the documents at his Bethesda, Maryland home years after leaving the Trump White House in 2019.
The materials were seized during an FBI raid on Bolton’s home and office in August 2025. Bolton initially pleaded not guilty to all charges at his arraignment in October.
Bolton, 76, is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. He began his public service in the Reagan administration, serving as an assistant attorney general and in roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
During the George W. Bush administration, Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001 to 2005. Then in August 2005, President Bush gave him a recess appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations — a high-profile posting that cemented Bolton’s reputation as a blunt, uncompromising voice for American interests at the time. He served until December 2006.
Bolton later served as President Donald Trump’s third National Security Adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. He became a sharp public critic of Trump after leaving the administration, authoring a memoir The Room Where It Happened.
Bolton has described the current prosecution as politically motivated retribution. Trump and his allies have pointed to the case as evidence of even-handed application of the law on classified documents.
Sentencing guidelines for the felony count allow for the possibility of no prison time, though the statutory maximum is 10 years. Bolton is expected to enter the formal guilty plea in court in the coming days.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
Photo “John Bolton” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0
