GREENBELT, Md. — President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty Friday to a single count of hoarding national defense information while working in the White House, leaving the 77-year-old facing up to five years in federal prison.
Bolton, an Iran hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, copped to the charge during a brief hearing in federal court just outside Washington, responding to a judge who asked whether he was guilty: “I am, Your Honor, and sorry for it.”
The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, but US Attorney Kelly Hayes clarified to reporters following the hearing that the Justice Department was asking for a five-year sentence for Bolton, who also agreed to pay a fine of $2.25 million.
Bolton will be sentenced Oct. 28.
The longtime GOP foreign policy figure was indicted by a federal grand jury this past October on 18 counts of illegally hoarding or sending sensitive information, raising the prospect that Bolton would spend the rest of his life behind bars after his Maryland home and DC office were raided by federal investigators on Aug. 22, 2025.
The charge that Bolton admitted to found that he unlawfully possessed a document with “intelligence about an adversary’s knowledge of planned US actions.” The hostile nation is not named, but is believed to be Iran.
Among the items recovered by the FBI were documents about weapons of mass destruction, internal government communications about strategy, secret travel memos, and the US mission to the UN.
Prosecutors say Bolton used email and various messaging apps to send documents classified as high as “top secret” to contacts that revealed intelligence about future US attacks, foreign adversaries and international relations.
Bolton was also accused of sending more than a thousand pages of diary-like notes and assessments via his personal AOL email to two individuals without the necessary clearance, widely believed to be his wife and daughter.
That information was exposed in July 2021 after the AOL account was infiltrated by Iranian-linked hackers, according to investigators.
Bolton has faced constant security threats from Iran since the January 2020 killing of notorious military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Friday’s guilty plea by Bolton wraps up a long-running investigation that began near the end of Trump’s first term and that FBI sources previously told The Post was mysteriously “shelved” during the administration of President Joe Biden.
In 2020, Bolton faced a separate investigation into his handling of classified information surrounding the publication of his best-selling White House memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” which detailed his 17 months as national security adviser.
The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript could harm national security if published. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.
Bolton’s attorney Abbe Lowell had argued that many of the documents seized by the feds in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for “The Room Where It Happened,” were decades old and dated from his client’s long career in government.
