1 of 2 | President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to retaining classified information. File Photo by Abir Sultan/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to retaining classified information.
Bolton has reached a tentative agreement ahead of his scheduled re-arraignment on June 26, The New York Times, CNN and CNBC reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Bolton will reportedly pay a $2 million fine as part of the plea agreement. He faces up to 60 months in prison for a single count of illegal retention of classified information. He has been charged with 10 counts of retaining national defense information and eight counts of transmission of national defense information.
The charges against Bolton do not allege that he kept original versions of classified documents. Rather he is accused of keeping diaries with classified information in them and sending emails that included details of his work as a national security advisor.
Bolton, who served under Trump in his first term as president from April 2018 to September 2019, allegedly mishandled classified information which he used to write the book The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.
The book, published in 2020, was critical of Trump. The president has been critical of Bolton over the book, calling on him to be arrested for including classified information in the memoir.
Bolton was indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland in October. In August, during the investigation into him, Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Md., was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
