Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is expected to plead guilty later this month to a felony charge of unlawfully retaining classified national defense information and pay a $2.25 million fine under a tentative plea deal with federal prosecutors, according to multiple reports.
People familiar with the negotiations say Bolton has reached an agreement in principle with the Justice Department to resolve an 18-count indictment filed in Maryland in 2025 over his handling of highly sensitive government records.
Under the deal, which still requires a judge's approval, Bolton would plead guilty to a single count related to retaining classified material in diary-style notes he kept while serving as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The plea hearing is expected to take place on June 26 in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, according to ABC News.
Sources briefed on the agreement say the proposed sentence would include the $2.25 million financial penalty and leave Bolton facing anywhere from no incarceration to a maximum of five years in prison.
Prosecutors had initially charged Bolton with multiple counts of transmitting and retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act, each carrying up to 10 years in prison. Bolton pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts when he was arraigned in October 2025, The Daily Record reported.
The indictment alleges Bolton stored more than 1,000 pages of diary-like entries and notes from intelligence briefings and high-level meetings at his Maryland home and Washington office, despite their classification at some of the government's highest levels.
Prosecutors say he shared portions of those notes, which described interactions with foreign leaders, sensitive threat assessments, and covert activities, with two relatives who did not hold security clearances, in part for possible use in a book project.
The reported plea deal would not resolve separate disputes over Bolton's memoir "The Room Where It Happened," which previously drew a civil lawsuit from the government over prepublication review but is not directly part of the criminal case.
Legal analysts note that the court must still decide whether to accept the agreement, and sentencing would occur at a later date after a presentence investigation, as per The Guardian.
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