BREAKING: John Bolton pleads guilty to illegally retaining classified information from first Trump admin

John Bolton, a former national security adviser turned foe to President Donald Trump, has pleaded guilty to one count of illegally retaining classified national security information related to work that he did in the first Trump administration.

Bolton served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser during his first term. With the guilty plea, Bolton is facing a sentence of up to 60 months in prison and has agreed to pay a fine of $2.25 million, per the Washington Examiner.

Since leaving the first administration, Bolton has been a frequent critic of Trump and wrote "The Room Where it Happened," in 2020, a memoir highly critical of the administration. Under the plea agreement, Bolton admitted to retaining classified information that was in a private diary entry. The fine of $2.25 million is nearly equivalent to the sales that he had from the book.  

Bolton was originally handed an 18-count indictment that was returned by a grand jury last fall. He pleaded not guilty to the slew of charges at the time. He was accused by the Trump administration's Department of Justice of retaining over 1,000 pages of classified national defense information, which included documents that were marked as "secret." He was also accused of transmitting classified information through his personal email, which unauthorized family members had access to.  

Bolton's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said that the former Trump official did not break the law in a statement. “The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago,” Lowell said. “These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021.”