President Trump on Friday derided former National Security Advisor John Bolton after his onetime aide acknowledged mishandling a classified national defense document.
Bolton entered a guilty plea earlier in the day during a hearing in US District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, admitting to one count of unauthorized possession of a national defense document.
Under the terms of the plea deal, prosecutors are expected to drop the other 17 counts against him at sentencing.
The plea quickly drew a reaction from Trump, who has remained sharply at odds with Bolton over foreign policy and the former adviser’s scathing memoir since their high-profile split in 2019.
“John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!” Trump wrote late Friday in a post on Truth Social.
“He is a terrible person, a lunatic who only wanted to start trouble and wars, and who was a needless pusher of death and destruction wherever he went. Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!”
Bolton, 77, is set to be sentenced on Oct. 28. As part of the agreement, he faces a $2.25 million fine, as much as five years in prison, three years of supervised release and up to 100 hours of community service. He will also forfeit his federal pension.
Attorneys for Bolton have said they are hoping he will be spared prison time.
According to prosecutors, Bolton unlawfully kept classified national defense information after leaving government service, including documents classified as top secret.
Authorities alleged he kept more than 1,000 pages of notes detailing his day-to-day activities as national security advisor and shared portions of that material with two family members using a personal email account.
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Federal prosecutors said the documents included highly sensitive intelligence involving covert action programs, human intelligence sources and methods and foreign military threats.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the investigation demonstrated that Bolton knowingly mishandled classified information.
“This FBI’s investigation proved that John Bolton knowingly transmitted top-secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house — all in direct violation of federal law,” Patel said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Despite an onslaught of false claims by the fake news stating this case was ‘retribution,’ this investigation was based on meticulous work from dedicated professionals at the FBI who followed the facts without fear or favor, and Bolton chose to admit his guilt and plead guilty.”
Bolton served as Trump’s national security advisor from April 2018 until September 2019. Trump has said he fired Bolton, while Bolton said that he resigned.
Their relationship deteriorated further after the publication of Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” which offered a highly critical account of Trump’s presidency.
The Trump administration sought unsuccessfully to block the book’s publication, arguing it contained classified information.
Bolton never faced any charges stemming from allegations that his memoir contained classified information.
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, defended his client’s decision to plead guilty, saying it reflected accountability.
“He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information,” Lowell said in a statement.
“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct.
“Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”
