Former adviser to US President Donald Trump John Bolton, who later became his active critic, entered into a plea deal for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, a number of major American media reported, citing sources familiar with the situation. As noted by CNN, which was the first to learn about the decision, 77-year-old Bolton can now avoid a prison sentence, but has agreed to pay a fine of over $2 million.
Bolton served as national security adviser in the first Trump administration for a year and a half. The president claimed he fired the GOP veteran in 2019 because of “disagreement with his proposals,” but Bolton insisted he left on his own. The New York Times (NYT) at the time wrote about the adviser's disagreement with the terms of Trump's deal to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
The indictment of Bolton in 2025 on 18 counts of mishandling state secrets was associated by the media with the “revenge” of Trump returning to the White House. Some sources, however, noted that the case, although brought shortly after Bolton's resignation, “gained momentum” under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden.
The essence of the case was that Bolton, while preparing his memoirs “The Room Where It Happened,” in which he criticized Trump’s work, wrote down state secrets in the form of a retelling in his personal diary and shared these notes with third parties. According to CNN, they were talking about his wife and daughter. The memoir was published in 2020, despite attempts by the first Trump administration to block its publication.
Bolton initially did not admit guilt and compared his persecution to the times of Joseph Stalin's leadership in the USSR. He faced more than 100 years in prison. As part of the plea deal, the maximum sentence can now be 60 months (five years), and the minimum – zero, the TV channel adds.
CNN, The Hill, NBC News and some other media outlets note, citing sources, that prosecutors have agreed to Bolton pleading guilty to one count of storing national security information. The remaining charges against him for transmitting this information will be dropped.
Officially, Bolton is scheduled to announce his change of position on June 26 at a hearing that is already marked on the court schedule as a re-arraignment.
The decision on the specific punishment for the Republican will be left to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland, appointed under Democratic President Barack Obama. The Hill notes that adviser Sandy Berger, who worked for Bill Clinton in the same position as Bolton, previously avoided prison time for a similar offense.
