Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former national security adviser John Bolton leaves the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland following a plea hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, June 26, 2026. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
John Bolton, a first-term national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge of misuse of classified information, the Justice Department said in a news release Friday.
The plea resolves 18 counts against Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He agreed to pay a $2.25 million penalty, the DOJ said. Accordingly, he faces up to five years in prison release.
While serving as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton recorded “highly sensitive classified information” from his official duties in a personal diary. He shared the diary entries with two family members who, according to the prosecution, did not have access to the information, which included top-secret material.
“John Bolton held a position of extraordinary public trust as the nation’s top national security adviser, and he betrayed that trust, endangering our country’s security,” Hayden O’Byrne, U.S. deputy assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, said in the statement. “Today’s resolution should send a message to other officials to whom the public has entrusted sensitive national defense information.”
Bolton and Trump
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement Friday that Bolton’s plea accepted responsibility for a mistake that was “what real leaders do,” contrasting that approach with Trump’s conduct as the Justice Department sought similar federal indictments against the then-president in 2023.
“In contrast, President Trump flouted secrecy laws, took real classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered in the investigation of this conduct, and never accepted responsibility for his conduct,” Lowell wrote. “Ambassador Bolton, whose crime was simply keeping a diary containing classified information, kept records to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”
Since leaving the White House, Bolton has been a consistent critic of Trump’s foreign policy.
This continued afterwards He was charged last year. Bolton, who also held positions in President George W. Bush’s administration and is associated with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, has done so repeatedly criticized on social media Trump’s deal with Iran just this week.
