How the Trump DOJ Extracted a Guilty Plea from John Bolton

How the Trump DOJ Extracted a Guilty Plea from John Bolton

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Former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, May 12, 2026.(Ritzau Scanpix/Liselotte Sabroe/via Reuters)

Lawfare and misconduct are not mutually exclusive.

According to several reports, John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to mishandling classified information in connection with his memoir about his tenure as national security adviser in the first Trump administration. The book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, was a blistering critique of the president strategically timed to be published in the run-up to the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Bolton has reached a deal with Trump DOJ prosecutors to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegal retention of classified information. He would face up to five years’ imprisonment (there ...

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