Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: Bolton pleads guilty

Bolton pleads guilty

Jun 26, 2026

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FILE - John Bolton speaks at Harvard Kennedy School's John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Sept. 29, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

John Bolton will pay $2.25 million in fines and give up his government pension, and could face time in prison. | Michael Dwyer, File/AP

JUDICIARY SQUARE: Former national security adviser John Bolton today pleaded guilty to a single charge of mishandling classified information, apologizing in federal court with a plea deal that could yet put him behind bars.

It’s a remarkable fall for the 77-year-old prominent defense hawk and conservative Donald Trump official-turned-enemy, who spent decades in top national security roles in the U.S. government. Bolton admitted to knowingly taking intelligence secrets and sharing them in private notes with family members in preparation for his memoir, though the information didn’t ultimately end up in the book, “The Room Where It Happened.”

“I am” guilty, “your honor, and sorry for it,” Bolton said this morning, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports from the court in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Bolton will pay $2.25 million in fines and give up his government pension. The judge can sentence him to up to five years in prison under the terms of the plea deal. The initial suite of 18 counts against Bolton could have yielded decades incarcerated.

The guilty plea is also a win for the Trump administration, but the facts of the case blur the questions about weaponization of law enforcement that have dogged the Justice Department. Bolton at first pleaded not guilty and tried to cast his prosecution as an example of top Trump officials improperly going after his political enemies. But federal prosecutors in fact had developed the case across both of Trump’s administrations and the Biden administration.

At the same time, Bolton’s lawyer argued afterward that he was being punished for the type of conduct that Trump himself got away with.

Bolton “took responsibility for a mistake he made,” attorney Abbe Lowell said. “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.” Trump’s own federal classified documents mishandling case was dismissed, and Trump insisted he never committed any wrongdoing with the secret materials he took to Mar-a-Lago between his presidencies.

Prosecutors said Bolton “abused his trust” in office, and “put our national security at grave risk,” using personal accounts to forward sensitive information. His email was later hacked by an actor with ties to Iran.

The defense could still try to get him out of serving time in prison. The facts to which both sides agreed today included that Bolton’s family members — his wife and daughter, NYT’s Aishvarya Kavi and Devlin Barrett report — didn’t pass along his emails to anyone else, and that Bolton’s team were the ones who told the government about the hack.

Bolton will be sentenced Oct. 28.

Good Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.

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6 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. STRAIT TALK: Iran today sharply rejected a statement by the U.S. and Gulf states about ships’ free passage in the Strait of Hormuz as “interventionist, irresponsible and provocative,” keeping tensions high in the region a day after Tehran’s drones reportedly attacked a ship, per Reuters. Trump responded on Truth Social this morning, calling the Iranian attack “a foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement.” Nonetheless, oil prices kept ticking down.

Meanwhile, wealthy Gulf countries that had long been insulated from Middle East wars feel newly vulnerable after this one — with some drawing closer to the U.S. and others to Iran, NYT’s Vivian Nereim reports.

2. TRADE WARS: Trump dangled a new trade threat on Truth Social, writing this afternoon that any European countries that slap a digital services tax on U.S. tech companies will suffer an immediate 100 percent tariff on all goods — regardless of any trade agreements that may already be in place. More from the AP

3. SPREADING THE WEALTH (TAX): California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issues with the proposed statewide wealth tax heading for the ballot this fall. Instead, today he called for a national wealth tax on billionaires, POLITICO’s Melanie Mason reports. “It’s time for an economic reset in America,” he wrote on Substack — with populist messaging that was quickly analyzed with an eye toward Newsom’s presidential ambitions.

4. SCHOOL DAZE: “MAGA Groups Help Trump Push Cultural Change in Schools,” by NYT’s Michael Bender: “The origins of the Smith [College] investigation highlight the catalytic role that Defending Education and other nonprofit groups have played in President Trump’s bid to reshape policy at the nation’s K-12 schools and universities, and to pressure the country to bow to his ideological and cultural agenda. … Of the more than 70 investigations into transgender school policies that the Education Department has announced since last year, about one-fourth have been based on complaints from nonprofit groups with ties to the Trump administration.”

5. RACE FOR THE HOUSE: Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) has racked up endorsements from a number of prominent local unions that previously backed Democrats, showing how difficult it’ll be for Democratic candidate Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor, to claw back working-class support in the area, POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky reports.

6. 2028 WATCH: Democrats are already anticipating a crazy presidential primary race, NOTUS’ Alex Roarty and colleagues report. Three potential contenders are considering opting out of the official debates. There could be a scramble for staffers, lanes of media and influence, and frontrunner status, as the party base seethes over both Trump and the Democratic establishment. And sources close to Kamala Harris world say she thinks “anybody running would have to go through her.”

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TALK OF THE TOWN

MEDIAWATCH — “MS NOW Will Expand Video Podcasts on Weekends, While Veteran Alex Witt Plans Exit,” by Variety’s Brian Steinberg: “Starting on Sunday, June 28, MS NOW will move away from featuring live, hosted hours after 6 p.m. on weekends and instead fill its schedule largely with taped video podcasts … MS NOW will cancel the new series ‘The Weekend: Primetime’ after June 27, and one of its hosts, Antonia Hylton, will take up anchoring Saturdays and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Alex Witt, the veteran anchor who has kept a news presence at the network since 1999 largely on weekend afternoons, will depart later in the year.”

FOLLOWING THE MONEY — White House enhancements that President Donald Trump said he would pay for, like replacing a walkway and repairing masonry, in fact cost taxpayers nearly $700,000, The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer reports. The administration has slashed spending on many national parks and redirected money instead to D.C.-area improvements — what Park Service employees tell him is “a quiet crisis unfolding.” The Interior Department responded that they’ve been “working on many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country.”

OUT AND ABOUT — Across the Aisle hosted a dinner conversation with Kenan Thompson about the intersection of comedy and politics last night at the Waldorf Astoria. SPOTTED: Doug Holtz-Eakin, Daniel Garza, Beth Robinson, Laura Dove, Ethan Kelly, Lindsay Hayes, Becky Tallent and Trovon Williams.

— Washington Women in Public Relations hosted its 2026 Emerging Leaders Awards last night, featuring Coinbase’s Julia Krieger as keynote speaker. Charmaine Riley, Isabel Aldunate and Janae Washington named this year’s winners: Emily Tillett, Amanda Finney, Nia Page, Casey Bell, Julie Hirschhorn, Meaghan Delaney and Ariana Perez.

— The Association of Equipment Manufacturers hosted a reception for Hill staffers from both parties yesterday evening at Sonoma Restaurant & Wine Bar. SPOTTED: Jeyben Castro, Jaelyn Evans, Alexandra Hamel, Abby Jablonski, Will Judson, Eli Mansour, Melissa Martinez, Sophya Ojeda, Matthew Smith, Caleb Franz, Aidan Beckwith, Miriam Berle, Anthony Fakhoury, Elle Ploeger and Ryan Ebrahimy.

TRANSITIONS — Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is bringing on longtime central bank economists Daniel Covitz and Eric Engstrom as advisers, WSJ’s Nick Timiraos scooped.

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