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President Trump slammed his former national security adviser after he pleaded guilty on Friday to improperly retaining sensitive materials from his time in the White House.
“John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on late Friday evening.
“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,” the president continued. “Hopefully, he will be dealt with harshly!”
Bolton has become an outspoken critic of the president since his time serving in the first Trump administration. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2025 on 18 charges related to mishandling classified documents.
These accusations against the national security adviser stem from over 1,000 pages of notes he shared through his personal email and a messaging app with family members who did not have security clearances. These notes were used for his 2020 memoir about his time in the Trump administration, entitled “The Room Where It Happened.”
The former United Nations ambassador admitted to one count of retaining national defense information during a federal court hearing on Friday in Greenbelt, Md.
When asked by the judge if he was guilty, Bolton replied, “I am, your honor.”
“I’m sorry for it,” he added.
Bolton’s guilty plea marks a major victory for Trump’s Department of Justice, which has pursued several criminal accusations against the president’s perceived political foes.
The 77-year-old now awaits his sentencing hearing, which has been scheduled for Oct. 25. Bolton faces a fine of $2.25 million and up to 5 years in prison, although his legal team hopes that he can avoid jail time entirely.
“Mr. Bolton knew the damage mishandling confidential material could cause to national security, and yet he still committed this misconduct and put American lives at risk,” U.S. Attorney Kelly O’Hayes said in a statement.
Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s attorney, said in a statement that the former national security adviser acted as “real leaders do” with his decision to plead guilty.
“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.
Lowell compared the case to the 2023 indictment against Trump, in which the president was accused of mishandling classified information by keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago during his first term. These charges were later dismissed.
“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,” Lowell said.
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