John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump who became one of his fiercest critics, appeared in court on Friday to plead guilty to unlawfully retaining national defense information.
Bolton reached a deal with US Justice Department prosecutors to plead guilty to a single charge of illegally keeping classified material. The government had accused him of keeping extensive notes on sensitive information to potentially use in a 2020 book he wrote that detailed his time in the White House and his belief that Trump was unfit for the presidency.
Bolton entered his plea before a US judge in Greenbelt, Maryland. A Justice Department attorney said that had the case gone to trial, the government would have shown that Bolton “abused” his position of trust.
Asked by the judge if he was guilty of the criminal offense, Bolton replied that he was and “sorry for it.”
As part of the deal, prosecutors agreed to ask for a sentence that includes a $2.25 million fine and a prison term of not more than five years, which is less than the 10-year maximum under US law. Bolton could argue for little or no time behind bars as part of that arrangement.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 28.
Ultimately it will be up to US District Judge Theodore Chuang to decide any prison time and a fine. Bolton could withdraw his guilty plea if the judge disagrees with the terms, the prosecutor confirmed during Friday’s hearing.
The agreement separately would require Bolton to serve as many as 100 hours of what the prosecutor described as “community service” to help the government identify and address issues related to the disclosure of classified information by public officials. The prosecutor didn’t elaborate on what that would involve, and the judge noted it was an unusual arrangement and not what he would normally consider community service.
Bolton also would have to participate in a briefing with officials from the Justice Department and US intelligence community related to his handling of classified information.
Bolton was charged in October 2025 when a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted him on 18 counts related to the mishandling of classified information. He initially pleaded not guilty.
Bolton served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term. The allegations against him centered on what the government described as “diary-like entries” detailing his day-to-day work in that position between 2018 and 2019. Prosecutors accused Bolton of sharing these notes with family members and storing printed copies at his home in Maryland for years.
None of the classified information that Bolton was charged with unlawfully keeping was included in his book when it was published, according to the government’s court filings.
The indictment against Bolton came as Trump pushed Justice Department officials to investigate and prosecute his perceived political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump called Bolton a “bad person” after the indictment became public but said he hadn’t reviewed the case against him.
Bolton’s case was among the most serious, given the charges related to protected national defense information. The investigation began during the Biden administration.
In 2021, a representative for Bolton alerted the FBI about a suspected hack of his personal email account by Iranian actors, but didn’t tell federal authorities at the time that he had used that account to share national defense information with his family, according to the indictment.
The case is United States v. Bolton, 25-cr-314, US District Court, District of Maryland (Greenbelt).
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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