John Bolton, the former national security adviser who broke ranks with President Donald Trump after leaving the White House, will enter a guilty plea Friday in federal court on charges of retaining classified national security information.
Bolton is scheduled for a re-arraignment hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he will plead guilty to a single count. The arrangement comes after months of legal wrangling that began with his indictment last October on 18 charges related to the handling of defense information.
Under the plea deal, Bolton faces a potential sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison. He has also agreed to pay 2.25 million dollars in restitution. The sentencing will be handled by Judge Theodore D. Chuang, who has up to 90 days to decide Bolton's punishment.
Bolton's attorney, Abbe Lowell, has maintained his client's innocence, characterizing the retained material as unclassified personal diary entries that Bolton shared only with immediate family members. Lowell argued the FBI had known about these records since 2021 and that no laws were broken. The lawyer disputed the Justice Department's framing of the case, noting that Bolton's career in public service spanned 45 years.
The case is part of a wave of prosecutions the Trump administration has pursued against high-profile critics. Last fall, New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted on mortgage fraud charges in a separate action; those charges were eventually dismissed, and the Justice Department's two attempts to re-indict her failed. Former FBI Director James Comey faced a similar arc: initial charges of lying to Congress were dismissed, though he was charged again in April after posting a photo of seashells on social media, which prosecutors characterized as threatening to the president. Both James and Comey are scheduled to stand trial in October and have denied all wrongdoing.
Bolton originally faced up to 10 years in prison on the original charges, along with 250,000 dollars in fines per count and three years of supervised release.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The plea deal suggests the government's case may have been shakier than the initial indictment implied, but Bolton's willingness to plead guilty still marks a striking reversal for one of Trump's fiercest cabinet critics."
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