In yet more good news for those wanting to see the slew of Swamp creatures who repeatedly betrayed and attacked President Donald Trump face consequences for their illegal actions, infamous neo-conservative warmonger John Bolton has reportedly agreed to a plea deal that involves his admitting to a major felony and paying a multi-million dollar fine.
As background, Bolton was accused of illegally retaining classified documents, putting American national security at risk. The basis of that complaint is that he reportedly kept diary entries from the brief time he spent in the first Trump White House in his home, and, according to prosecutors, shared “more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities” with two unauthorized persons, doing so via his personal email account.
According to CNN, which reported on the matter, Bolton will plead guilty to one felony count of illegally retaining sensitive national security information. As part of that, he will pay a fine of over $2 million. Additionally, he will face up to 60 months in prison, the maximum that one count of illegally retaining such information carries.
And it does appear that prison time is on the table. For example, CNN notes, a retired Air Force officer got three years in prison in 2023 for storing classified information in his home, and a former FBI analyst was, in the same year, sentenced to four years in prison for the same offense. The amount of time in prison can increase dramatically when the information is shared with others, as Bolton is alleged to have done.
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz appeared on the network to discuss the matter with host Pamela Brown. Brown introduced her by saying, “Bolton is expected to plead guilty over mishandling classified documents. This is according to three sources familiar with the matter. I want to go straight to CNN senior crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz. She has this exclusive reporting.”
Polantz said, “Pam, the Justice Department securing a guilty plea from John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor in the first Trump administration, my sources are telling me that he is expected to plead guilty to one count of illegally retaining classified information or national security information at his home.”
She continued, noting that this is not a particularly partisan case, as the Biden Administration began it and Trump has continued it, saying, “Now this was a substantial case that had been investigated very significantly by first the Biden Justice Department, the whole way through the beginning of this term of Donald Trump, this is also a man that Donald Trump very much hates and very much wanted to see prosecuted.”
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Describing the allegations in somewhat more depth, she explained, “What he’s alleged to have done here is taken documents, or taken notes of documents, or briefings he was being given as National Security Adviser in the first Trump White House, and then emailing them to himself, almost as if it were a diary entry, and then printing them out, allegedly, and keeping them in his home after he was fired as National Security Adviser in the first Trump administration. He then wrote a memoir, and his home was searched. When his home was searched last August by the FBI, they found multiple electronics and documents with information labeled secret or confidential or classified, not necessarily the documents themselves, potentially, but he, at very least, had these diary-like entries, and so his initial case, that was charged for 18 counts, he’s going to be pleading down to one count.”
She concluded, “We will still be watching to see exactly what the Justice Department asks for in court, whether he should be spending time in prison. That is a possibility. This would be a felony charge for John Bolton, but this is a significant case that the Justice Department has made a deal on to secure a guilty plea of a significant political foe.”
Watch her here: