John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-chief critic, has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty to illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, CNN reported Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
Bolton has also agreed to pay a fine of more than $2 million, according to one of the sources. A conviction on a single count of illegal retention carries a sentence of zero to 60 months in prison. A hearing is scheduled for June 26, according to the court docket.
The deal comes roughly eight months after Bolton was indicted on 18 counts — eight of illegal transmission of national defense information and 10 of illegal retention — over allegations he kept diary-like entries from his time in the Trump White House and shared more than 1,000 pages of classified notes with his wife and daughter via a personal email account. The transmission charges are not part of the guilty plea.
Bolton’s case is distinct from Trump’s other high-profile prosecutions. Unlike charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat — both of which were dismissed after a judge found the prosecutor unlawfully appointed — Bolton’s prosecution retained the support of career investigators throughout, CNN previously reported.
Trump had long demanded Bolton’s arrest over his scathing 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. The FBI’s renewed inquiry into Bolton began during the Biden administration after his email was breached by suspected Iranian hackers, who investigators said exposed classified diary entries from his roughly 17 months as national security adviser.
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