John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Trump, pleaded guilty Friday to a single count of hoarding national defense information. The 77-year-old now faces up to five years in federal prison.
Bolton entered his plea during a brief hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. He was initially indicted in October on 18 counts related to illegally hoarding or transmitting sensitive government information. The charges stemmed from a federal investigation that began near the end of Trump's first term, which FBI sources described as having been "shelved" during the subsequent Biden administration.
Federal investigators raided Bolton's Maryland home and Washington D.C. office on August 22, 2025. Among the items recovered were documents concerning weapons of mass destruction, internal government communications regarding strategy, secret travel memos, and information related to the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Prosecutors alleged that Bolton used email and various messaging applications to transmit documents classified as "top secret." These transmissions allegedly revealed intelligence about future U.S. attacks, foreign adversaries, and international relations.
Investigators also stated that Bolton sent over a thousand pages of notes, described as diary-like assessments, via his personal AOL email account to two individuals, widely believed to be his wife and daughter. This information became public in July 2021 after the AOL account was reportedly infiltrated by hackers linked to Iran. Bolton has reportedly faced ongoing security threats from Iran since the January 2020 killing of military commander Qassem Soleimani.
This is not the first time Bolton has faced scrutiny over his handling of classified information. In 2020, he was investigated in connection with the publication of his memoir, "The Room Where It Happened." The Trump administration argued the book could harm national security, while Bolton's legal team contended that the manuscript had been reviewed and did not contain classified information. Bolton's attorney, Abbe Lowell, had also argued that many of the documents seized in 2025 were decades old and dated from Bolton's extensive government career, with some having been approved during the pre-publication review for his memoir.