John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump who became a critic of the president, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of retaining national security information.
This was a plea deal for Bolton, who also served as a recess-appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration. It marks an unexpected chapter in his lengthy career in national security and foreign policy roles and his time as a conservative pundit and author.
In October, a federal grand jury indicted Bolton on eight counts of transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of retaining national defense information, most of it classified as top secret information.
The indictment alleged Bolton “abused his position” as national security adviser during the first Trump administration by “sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities” with two relatives. The relatives were not named in the indictment.
Bolton sent classified information over commercial email services such as AOL and Google, according to the indictment.
Bolton appeared Friday morning before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, a Barack Obama appointee, in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
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Bolton faces a maximum prison sentence of up to 60 months and has agreed to pay $2.25 million, federal prosecutors said, according to NBC News. He is set to be sentenced Oct. 28.
Trump’s Justice Department has faced criticism for its indictments and investigations against some of the president’s political foes, but a Daily Signal analysis noted that the department’s case against Bolton was potentially much stronger than the other cases.
Federal law enforcement said it obtained information on Bolton’s activities from a foreign adversary’s spy service, including emails that allegedly show he may have sent sensitive information on an unclassified system while working for the Trump White House. The information was allegedly sent to people helping Bolton write his 2020 memoir “The Room Where It Happened.”
After exiting the White House in 2019, Bolton said that Trump was “not fit for office,” lacked “the competence to carry out the job,” and was “stunningly unformed,” according to ABC News. Bolton also told The Hill, “Donald Trump doesn’t really have a philosophy, as we understand it in political terms. He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space.”
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