John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, stood before a federal judge on June 26 and pleaded guilty to one count of retaining national security information. The admission marks a dramatic fall for a man who once oversaw the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Bolton, who served in the White House from 2018 to 2019 before becoming a vocal Trump critic, struck a plea deal earlier this month. The charge stems from a sweeping federal indictment that originally accused him of 18 counts—eight for transmitting national defense information and ten for retaining it. Much of the material was classified as top secret.
Court documents reveal a troubling pattern. The indictment alleged Bolton “abused his position” by sharing over a thousand pages of daily intelligence with two relatives living in his home. He kept handwritten notes of his official activities, then turned them into diary-like entries sent through a commercial messaging app. He also transmitted top secret data to the same relatives using personal AOL and Google email accounts.
The relatives were not named in the indictment. Bolton faces sentencing later this year, with the plea deal likely to reduce a potential prison term that could have stretched decades.
