John Bolton Faces Up to Five Years in Prison on Guilty Plea in Classified Documents Case

Saying John Bolton’s actions betrayed trust, federal prosecutors on Friday announced that the national security adviser during President Trump’s first term has pleaded guilty to unlawfully retaining sensitive national security information.Bolton admitted to using his personal email account to share more than 1,000 pages of classified information with two people who did not have clearances. The individuals, who are unnamed in court documents, are reportedly his wife and daughter.“I’m sorry for it,” Bolton told the judge as he entered his guilty plea. One of the documents Bolton shared disclosed top secret intelligence about an adversary’s plans for an attack conducted against American forces in another country. It contained human intelligence obtained through sensitive sources and methods, and it discussed a covert action program. Iran got hold of some of that information when agents, believed to be associated with Iran’s government, hacked Bolton’s email account.“Mr. Bolton had access to, and was responsible for, safeguarding the most sensitive national defense information, including classified material,” a United States attorney, Kelly Hayes, said during a news conference outside a Greenbelt, Maryland, federal courthouse. “Mr. Bolton knew how to handle classified information, where it should be stored, how it should be stored, and with whom he could share that information.”Last August, the FBI conducted surprise early-morning raids seeking classified documents at Bolton’s home at Bethesda, Maryland, and his Washington office. A federal grand jury indicted Bolton on 18 counts of improperly storing top secret documents and sharing diary-like national security notes.The information centered on material used for Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” Mr. Trump unsuccessfully tried to block the book from publication, accusing Bolton of including classified information that could compromise national security. Bolton said the book did not contain any classified material and had been reviewed by the National Security Council.Sentencing is scheduled for October. Bolton faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release. He will also pay a fine of $2.25 million and will forfeit his pension. He faced a much longer sentence if the case had gone to trial.“Today’s plea should be a warning to anyone at any level of government,” the deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division Hayden O’Byrne said. “If you leak America’s secrets or if you mishandle them … we’ll be there to prosecute you.”Bolton was once a supporter of Mr. Trump but their relationship soured and he became a vocal critic. Bolton claimed the president was using the Justice Department to punish him as part of a retribution campaign against his enemies.Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client took responsibility for a mistake he made.“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct,” Mr. Lowell said in a statement.

John Bolton Faces Up to Five Years in Prison on Guilty Plea in Classified Documents Case

John Bolton Faces Up to Five Years in Prison on Guilty Plea in Classified Documents Case

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