John Bolton reaches plea deal over mishandling classified documents | John Bolton
Former US national security adviser John Bolton, who left Donald Trump’s first administration and became a staunch critic of the US president, has reached a plea deal in a case accusing him of mishandling classified documents, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The deal, which is subject to court approval, would allow Bolton to plead guilty to one count of illegally storing sensitive national security information and would require him to pay a $2.25 million fine and be sentenced to five years in prison without notice, the person said.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Court records show Bolton will appear in court on June 26 to enter a new plea in the case.
The justice department filed federal charges in October 2025 against Bolton, who was one of Trump’s critics and filed criminal charges against him within weeks.
Trump said at the time that he was unaware of the accusations against Bolton but claimed that his former adviser was a “bad guy.”
Bolton had already fallen out of favor with Trump when he published his memoir The Room Where It Happened in 2020, which included a critical behind-the-scenes look at his administration. The book underwent lengthy review under the first Trump administration before publication. The accusations relate to notes and diary entries Bolton took while he was national security adviser.
Bolton’s book predetermined Much of Trump’s foreign policy orientation in his second term has seen more than half the world’s countries have no U.S. ambassador and America’s foreign relations have become secondary to Trump’s personal vendettas and volatile temperament.
Bolton is represented by Abbe Lowell, who has developed an app that defends the targets of Trump’s vindictive impulses. Lowell argued that the notes were memoirs, not officially classified, and that the timing of the investigation was politically motivated. Lowell did not immediately respond to a call or email seeking comment.
Other cases of perceived opponents of Trump, such as charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James, have faced hurdles in court and widespread accusations of political motivation.
The publication of Bolton’s 2020 memoir prompted a civil complaint from the Justice Department in June 2020 seeking to block the book’s publication on national security grounds. The FBI later began investigating Bolton during the Biden administration, with an investigation into the memoirs and an investigation into a foreign hack of his personal email in 2021.
Bolton’s book created a bombshell effect. He wrote that Trump was open to lifting presidential term limits, praised the construction of concentration camps in China and offered to stop investigations into authoritarian allies to curry favor, and asked China to use its economic might to help him win a second election.
In his book, Bolton claimed that Trump spoke “astonishingly” about China’s economic capacity in a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and began “begging Xi to make sure he would win.” “He underscored the importance of farmers and China’s increased purchases of soybeans and wheat to the election results,” Bolton wrote. “I would have written exactly what Trump said, but the government’s pre-publication review process decided otherwise.”
Prosecutors alleged a pattern of mishandling classified material in logs kept on a computer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, and in his office in Washington, D.C., from April 2018 to August 2025. Materials seized in a raid in August included briefings on weapons of mass destruction, the leadership of foreign adversaries, and foreign policy relations.
