Former President Donald Trump took to social media Friday to criticize his one-time National Security Advisor John Bolton, hours after Bolton pleaded guilty to mishandling a classified national defense document. Bolton entered his guilty plea during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The plea agreement will result in prosecutors dismissing the remaining 17 counts against Bolton at sentencing. Trump, who has had a public falling out with Bolton since 2019, responded swiftly on his Truth Social platform.
"John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!" Trump wrote. "He is a terrible person, a lunatic who only wanted to start trouble and wars, and who was a needless pusher of death and destruction wherever he went. Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!"
Bolton, 77, faces a potential sentence of up to five years in prison, a $2.25 million fine, three years of supervised release, and community service. He will also forfeit his federal pension. His attorneys have expressed hope that he will avoid jail time.
Prosecutors alleged that Bolton unlawfully retained classified national defense information after leaving his government post, including documents marked top secret. The government contends that Bolton kept more than 1,000 pages of notes detailing his activities as national security advisor and shared portions of this material with family members via a personal email account. These documents reportedly included highly sensitive intelligence concerning covert action programs, human intelligence sources and methods, and foreign military threats.
FBI Director Kash Patel stated that the investigation confirmed Bolton knowingly transmitted top-secret information through personal online accounts and kept these documents at his residence, in violation of federal law. "This FBI’s investigation proved that John Bolton knowingly transmitted top-secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house — all in direct violation of federal law," Patel said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Despite an onslaught of false claims by the fake news stating this case was ‘retribution,’ this investigation was based on meticulous work from dedicated professionals at the FBI who followed the facts without fear or favor, and Bolton chose to admit his guilt and plead guilty."
Bolton served as Trump's national security advisor from April 2018 to September 2019. The two men have offered differing accounts of Bolton's departure, with Trump stating he fired Bolton and Bolton asserting he resigned. Their relationship further strained following the 2020 publication of Bolton's memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," which offered a critical perspective on the Trump presidency. The Trump administration's attempt to block the book's publication, based on claims it contained classified information, was unsuccessful.
Bolton's attorney, Abbe Lowell, defended his client's decision to plead guilty, characterizing it as an act of accountability. Lowell stated, "He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information." He contrasted this with Trump's handling of classified documents, saying, "By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct. Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself."