John Bolton to plead guilty in classified documents case, pay $2M fine

Former US NSA John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to a felony count of mishandling classified documents. He has agreed to pay a $2M fine. Bolton faces 0-60 months in prison for illegal retention of sensitive national security documents.

Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton on Thursday is expected to plead guilty over mishandling classified documents, sources told CNN. Bolton will also plead guilty to one felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents and has agreed to pay a fine of over USD 2 million. A conviction on one count of illegal retention results in a sentence between 0 and 60 months in prison.

The hearing would take place on June 26, sources indicated to CNN. Bolton was charged by Maryland prosecutors for allegedly keeping diary entries from the first term of US President Donald Trump's tenure in his home. Prosecutors cast a poser on Bolton, accusing him of sharing "more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities" through his personal email account with his wife and daughter. But Bolton did not plead guilty to this part of the accusation.

Original Charges and Trump's Reaction

Bolton had served one year under the first administration of Trump and was originally charged with eight counts of transmission of national defence information and 10 counts of retention of national defence information, CNN reported. Trump called for the arrest of Bolton over his 2020 memoir that was highly critical of him. He said that Bolton should have gone to jail because classified information was contained in the book. But Bolton's case has had the support of career prosecutors and investigators, as per CNN.

The Legal Battle Over Bolton's Memoir

Trump's first Justice Department opened criminal and civil investigations into the book titled 'The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir' in 2020, but it was closed within a year, as per CNN. The suit by the Trump administration claimed that Bolton did not wait for the national security review of his manuscript, over which he worked closely with government officials, before allowing his book to be sent to printers.

But the judge in the case sided with Bolton over the Trump administration's efforts to stop the book's publication, the New York Times reported. The book went on to be published, and Bolton described what he labelled repeated instances of corruption and "obstruction as a way of life," as per the report. (ANI)

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