John Bolton pleads guilty to Espionage Act charge over classified 'diary' entries

Former U.S. national security adviser John R. Bolton II pleaded guilty Friday to an Espionage Act charge in a case centered on his handling of highly sensitive national defense information in personal “diary” entries sent through non-government channels, including an email account prosecutors say was later hacked by an actor believed linked to Iran.

Bolton, 77, of Bethesda, Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court in Maryland to one count of retention of national defense information, identified as Count 12 of the indictment. The plea resolves all 18 counts in the case, which had included eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention. U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang set sentencing for Oct. 28, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. Prosecutors said Bolton faces a statutory maximum of 60 months in prison on the count and agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine. The plea agreement also says federal law will bar Bolton and his survivors from collecting an annuity or federal retirement pay.

The Espionage Act provision at issue, 18 U.S.C. § 793, makes it a crime to willfully retain or transmit national defense information. Prosecutors said that while Bolton was national security adviser, he incorporated highly sensitive classified information into diary entries and sent those documents through personal email accounts and a non-government messaging app to two family members who were not authorized to receive classified information. The Justice Department said the material was classified at levels up to TOP SECRET and Sensitive Compartmented Information, one of the government’s strictest intelligence handling categories.

According to prosecutors, the information in those entries included foreign adversaries’ military operation plans, covert U.S. government actions in foreign countries, and intelligence about foreign leaders obtained from clandestine human sources and intercepted communications. Prosecutors also said one of Bolton’s personal email accounts was later hacked by a cyber actor believed associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran. They said Bolton reported the hack to law enforcement but did not tell agents or the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information.

Bolton is a longtime Republican foreign policy figure best known for serving as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and earlier as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He served as national security adviser from April 2018 through September 2019. The case against him followed FBI searches of his Bethesda home and Washington office on Aug. 22, 2025, and an 18-count indictment returned in October 2025 and unsealed later that month.

The allegations stood out in part because they involved prosecutors’ claim that some of the government’s most closely guarded secrets were copied into personal notes and routed outside official systems to relatives with no clearance to see them. In announcing the plea, Hayden O’Byrne, acting deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said: “John Bolton held a position of extraordinary public trust as the country’s top National Security Advisor, and he betrayed that trust, jeopardizing our nation’s security.”