Report: Bolton to plead guilty to retaining classified documents, faces $2.25M fine
OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
3:58 PM – Thursday, June 4, 2026
Former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton reportedly plans to plead guilty to a single felony count of unauthorized retention of classified information in a private diary, according to several reports citing sources familiar with the matter.
The plea deal, reported on Thursday, would resolve a criminal case filed in October after a federal grand jury charged him with 10 counts of retaining national defense information and eight counts of transmission of classified information. The materials included notes from his time in government, which he allegedly shared with his family while writing a memoir about his tenure in the first Trump administration, from 2018 to 2019.
In August, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided his home in Bethesda, Maryland, where he allegedly kept the sensitive materials.
“From on or about April 9, 2018, through at least on or about August 22, 2025, BOLTON abused his position as National Security Advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor—including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level—with two unauthorized individuals,” the indictment read.
“BOLTON also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland,” it continued.
Under the proposed plea agreement, Bolton would face a $2.25 million fine and any prison sentence would be capped at five years, according to an anonymous source who spoke to the Associated Press. The sentence would ultimately be at the judge’s discretion.
Bolton clashed with the Trump administration over foreign policy issues, including President Donald Trump’s handling of Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan. He was fired by the president in 2019.
In 2020, Bolton released his tell-all book about his brief time working under Trump, titled “The Room Where It Happened.”
“He released massive amounts of classified, and confidential, … information. That’s illegal and you go to jail for that,” Trump said during a 2020 Fox News interview.
Bolton is scheduled to appear for a hearing on June 26th, court documents showed.
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