John Bolton reportedly will plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information, and will pay a $2.25 million fine to avoid jail time. From the indictment that gave rise to the current plea:
“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.
The documents, according to the indictment, revealed intelligence about future attacks by an adversarial group in another country; a liaison partner sharing sensitive information with the U.S. intelligence community; intelligence that a foreign adversary was planning a missile launch in the future, and a litany of other “TOP SECRET” information.
We wrote about the search executed by the FBI at Bolton’s home in August 2025, and about the indictment that was released in October of last year. Apparently Bolton emailed the classified materials in question to his wife and daughter near the end of his tenure as National Security Advisor. Bolton went on to write a book about his time in the Trump administration that was bitterly critical of President Trump, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, but as I understand it, the classified materials that were the subject of the criminal prosecution were not included in the book.
We have written about Bolton many times over the years. When I searched on Bolton’s name on the Power Line search engine, I was reminded of how our view of him changed. Early on, we were strong admirers of his foreign policy views. Later, when he clashed with Trump and published his critical memoir, we parted company. Bolton seems to me to be a sad case. It was apparent, when Trump was staffing his administration for his first term, that Bolton’s foreign policy views were different from Trump’s in important ways. With hindsight, Trump should not have appointed Bolton, and Bolton should not have accepted the NSA post.
But Bolton wasn’t content to disagree with his boss. For whatever reason, he became afflicted with an obsessive hatred of Trump, and his later years have been consumed with bitter attacks on Trump that have led Bolton a long distance away from the foreign policy views that dominated earlier phases of his career. Now, at 77, Bolton’s career is over. His last headlines will relate to a criminal conviction for mishandling classified information. Bolton strikes me as one of many victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
