President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser is expected to plead guilty to charges stemming from the mishandling of classified information, ABC News reported. This development marks a significant turn in a case that has been unfolding since Bolton was indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland back in October 2025.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive documents. As part of this expected agreement, he has also agreed to pay a fine of $2.25 million. A rearraignment is already on the books for June 26, which is a clear signal that the plea is moving forward. The Department of Justice is currently declining to comment on the matter, and Bolton could not be reached for comment regarding this latest update.
The specific count Bolton is expected to plead guilty to involves keeping classified national security information in his personal diaries. Even with this plea, sources indicate that Bolton intends to maintain that he did not remove any documents with classification markings from government offices.
The political backdrop here is impossible to ignore
Bolton is also expected to maintain that his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” did not contain classified information, though he apparently wants to take responsibility for his actions in this specific legal context. This guilty plea would effectively make Bolton the only successful case so far in what has been described as a campaign of retribution by President Trump against his perceived political enemies.
To understand how we got here, it helps to look back at the original indictment from October 2025. At that time, a federal grand jury in Maryland charged Bolton with 18 counts total, including eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information.
Prosecutors had alleged that Bolton used a non-government personal email account and a messaging application to transmit at least eight documents containing information classified from secret to top secret. Seven of those transmissions supposedly happened while he was serving as national security adviser between 2018 and 2019, with another sent shortly after his departure from the administration in September 2019.
The details of the original indictment were quite specific. Prosecutors claimed that Bolton shared over a thousand pages of information in diary-like entries with two recipients, identified as his wife and daughter. Furthermore, the indictment alleged that a cyber actor believed to be associated with Iran hacked Bolton’s personal email account and accessed the classified information he had shared with his relatives. When Bolton reported the hack to authorities in July 2021, prosecutors claimed he failed to disclose that he had shared sensitive national security information.
Bolton has consistently denied the allegations throughout this process. In a statement provided back in October 2025, he said, “For four decades, I have devoted my life to America’s foreign policy and national security. I would never compromise those goals.” He also argued that his book was reviewed and approved by career clearance officials. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, has previously stated that the records in question were unclassified diary entries shared only with immediate family and that the underlying facts were resolved years ago.
Since leaving the first Trump administration and publishing his tell-all book, Bolton has been a frequent target of the President’s ire. In a June 2022 interview, President Trump stated, “He took classified information and he published it, during a presidency. It’s one thing to write a book after. During. And I believe that he’s a criminal, and I believe, frankly, he should go to jail for that, and that probably, possibly will happen. That’s what should happen.”
Attorney General Pamela Bondi previously stated regarding the indictment, “There is one tier of justice for all Americans. Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
It is a high-profile case that has touched on everything from personal diary entries to alleged foreign hacking, and it appears we are now reaching a definitive conclusion with the upcoming court date on June 26.
Published: Jun 4, 2026 03:15 pm