Ex-Trump adviser turned critic John Bolton pleads guilty in classified information case
John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser in his first administration before becoming an outspoken critic, has plead guilty in a federal court hearing in Maryland to one count of retaining classified national security information in a case that could send him to prison for up to five years.
The charge is specifically related to diary entries about his work during Trump’s first term that he compiled for his memoir, which was deeply critical of Trump. Bolton was accused of transmitting some of these materials to two relatives, whom multiple outlets have reported were his wife and daughter.
He initially pleaded not guilty to an 18-count indictment in October last year, but under a plea deal with the US justice department, Bolton agreed to plead guilty to the single count of retaining the classified information in diary-like entries and also to pay a fine of over $2m.
Had he gone to trial and lost, Bolton could have faced decades of incarceration. A trial also could have dragged significant classified information into the public realm in order for Bolton to defend himself, which was cited as another reason he took the deal.
Bolton is expected to argue for no prison time but the DOJ may seek to incarcerate him, setting up a showdown at his sentencing, which is due to take place at a later date.
Key events
Speaking to reporters after John Bolton’s hearing, US attorney Kelly Hayes said: “The rules governing classified and national defense information apply equally to everyone, regardless of position and regardless of how long you have served with the United States government.”
While his plea agreement with the justice department may enable John Bolton to avoid time behind bars, the judge ultimately will decide his punishment.
The plea agreement recommends capping any prison sentence at five years but the judge isn’t bound by that part of the deal, the Associated Press notes.
Bolton can withdraw his guilty plea if the judge issues a longer prison sentence or a fine greater than $2.25m.
Per his plea deal, a justice department prosecutor told Judge Theodore Chuang that John Bolton faces a fine of $2.25m – half of which should be paid within five days of his sentencing – followed by up to three years of supervised release and he also agreed to forfeit his pension from his federal service.
The sentencing is scheduled for 28 October.
Trump forced to drain the pool swamp – podcast
As we’ve been reporting, the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool will have to be drained again. Donald Trump has blamed vandalism for the failure to keep the water “American flag blue”. But what if this small body of water is proof that the president can’t outrun the truth?
In the latest edition of our Politics Weekly America podcast, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Arwa Mahdawi about why this project, which has cost the taxpayer millions of dollars, is proving to be such an embarrassing failure for a man obsessed with image.
Ex-Trump adviser turned critic John Bolton pleads guilty in classified information case
John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser in his first administration before becoming an outspoken critic, has plead guilty in a federal court hearing in Maryland to one count of retaining classified national security information in a case that could send him to prison for up to five years.
The charge is specifically related to diary entries about his work during Trump’s first term that he compiled for his memoir, which was deeply critical of Trump. Bolton was accused of transmitting some of these materials to two relatives, whom multiple outlets have reported were his wife and daughter.
He initially pleaded not guilty to an 18-count indictment in October last year, but under a plea deal with the US justice department, Bolton agreed to plead guilty to the single count of retaining the classified information in diary-like entries and also to pay a fine of over $2m.
Had he gone to trial and lost, Bolton could have faced decades of incarceration. A trial also could have dragged significant classified information into the public realm in order for Bolton to defend himself, which was cited as another reason he took the deal.
Bolton is expected to argue for no prison time but the DOJ may seek to incarcerate him, setting up a showdown at his sentencing, which is due to take place at a later date.
As the never-ending story of Trump’s doomed multimillion dollar renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool drags on, CNN reports that a company involved in a previous renovation 15 years ago passed on the president’s project after deeming it “unfeasible”.
Two employees of New Jersey-bsed firm Sika Corporation, which provided the concrete construction and sealing products for a 2010 renovation project of the pool, told CNN the company declined on the basis that Trump’s demands that the work be completed by the Fourth of July and that the bottom of the pool had to be blue, made the task “unfeasible”.
As we all know by now, less than a month after it was applied, the lining that turned the bottom of the reflecting pool “American flag blue” started peeling off, prompting the president to baselessly blame “vandals” rather than admit the job was rushed, and sent contractors in to patch up the problem. Trump has floated a number of allegations, mostly with no evidence, including that vandals made a gash hundreds of feet long and illegally polluted the pool with chemicals.
Meanwhile, algal blooms sabotaged the water color, turning it murky green. The interior department prematurely declared victory over the algae and even likened it to the US’s supposed victory over Iran. Over a week later, Trump’s war on algae is in fact still very much ongoing, so … do with that what you will.
Johnson says he will send housing bill to Trump’s desk
In case you missed it yesterday, House speaker Mike Johnson said he was sending the bipartisan housing bill to Donald Trump’s desk, a day after the president abruptly cancelled its signing as he tried to pressure the Senate to pass the unrelated Save America Act.
Johnson told reporters after his lengthy crunch-time meeting with the president that they are “on exactly the same page”, though he didn’t mention the housing bill specifically.
And it’s important to note that Trump has not yet committed to signing the legislation, despite the fact that the bill has overwhelming bipartisan support and his own party is keen to use it to show voters they’re working to lower living costs ahead of November’s midterms.
By formally sending the bill to the president’s desk, Johnson has opened the 10-day window (excluding Sundays) during which Trump must decide whether he will sign or veto the legislation. If he doesn’t do either, it automatically becomes law without his signature.
For his part, after the meeting Trump publicy urged House GOP hardliners to stop “grandstanding” and to unify after they brought most activity in the lower chamber to a halt earlier this week over the Save Act.
“House Republicans should unify, and stop voting down ‘Rules’ or, threatening to do so. Giving power to the Radical Left Dumocrats in the House to control what goes up for a Vote will make our outcomes worse, not better. No more grandstanding, please! They are the Dumocrats, and we can’t let them WIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
While the president threw him a lifeline, Johnson’s headache is by no means over. Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who’s leading the hardline rebellion, wrote on X after Trump and Johnson’s meeting that she had submitted an amendment to the House rules committee to attach the Save Act to the annual defense bill.
But per Axios, Luna told reporters yesterday that she is not promising to support next week’s rule if leadership blocks that effort.
Alarm over ‘extreme’ sentences for anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism
Sam Levine
The decades-long prison sentences for a group of Texas activists convicted of terrorism and other charges in connection to a Fourth of July protest last year has caused widespread alarm, given their unusually punitive length and for the apparent harsh criminalization of protest activity under Donald Trump’s justice department.
Eight people who participated in a protest at the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, were sentenced on Tuesday to between 50 and 100 years in prison. A ninth person, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, the husband of one of the demonstrators, did not participate in the protest, but was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he was convicted of moving boxes containing leftwing zines and other materials after a prison phone call from his wife.
“These sentences are a travesty and totally unjustified, but that’s the point. Americans hate the fascist Trump regime, so the only way they can try to cling to power is brute force,” the representative Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, posted on X. “More bullshit ‘terrorism’ charges like these are coming.”
Sanchez-Estrada’s sentence in particular has been condemned by first amendment advocates, who say that it sends a chilling message about the kind of ideological material people are allowed to possess.
Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement:
[The zines Sanchez-Estrada was punished for moving are] no different from the pro-Revolution pamphlets this country’s founders had in mind when they drafted the first amendment’s press clause.
Sanchez’s case is the latest example of the Trump administration grasping at any legal straws it can to criminalize disfavored ideologies and writings, from conflating dissent with terrorism to deporting immigrants who report on protests or criticize wars the US bankrolls.
Americans should not make the mistake of believing Sanchez’s sentence only threatens immigrants, leftists or so-called antifa members – they’re just the low-hanging fruit, not the endgame.
Here’s Sam’s report:
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
John Bolton, former national security adviser to Donald Trump, is expected to plead guilty on Friday to charges that he unlawfully retained sensitive national security information.
The agreement with federal prosecutors includes a $2.25m fine, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one count of retaining classified information, which is specifically related to diary entries about his work during Trump’s first term. The former adviser, who is now a prominent critic of Trump, was accused of transmitting some of these materials to two relatives.
The trial is scheduled to take place in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Friday – and a possible sentence could range from no jail time to five years.
In October, Bolton pleaded not guilty to charges of mishandling classified information when he worked in the Trump White House.
“This was a very difficult decision for him,” the source close to Bolton said to NBC, in relation to his expected guilty plea. “Most importantly, he is doing what leaders do and taking responsibility.
“He understands that if he went to trial what that would mean, which essentially would be the disclosure of many, many more classified documents that he would need to reveal to defend himself. And given the Ukraine and the Middle East, he didn’t want to do that.”
Elsewhere, the supreme court conservative majority passed two new rulings on Thursday that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protection and fundamentally reshape the asylum system in the United States.
This means that the court has allowed the administration to move forward with policies that could remove more than 1 million people from the US, and could also possibly prevent others from entering.
Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings.
In case after case, the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has green-lighted Donald Trump’s policies targeting both legal and illegal immigration with few exceptions, while its three liberal justices have objected to most of his actions.
This will mostly impact Haitian and Syrian immigrants, with hundreds of thousands expected to be stripped of their Temporary Protected Status.
“The Trump administration has turned the immigration system into a deportation machine,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School in New York.
“In most cases, the supreme court has been a rubber stamp for Trump’s mass deportation agenda,” Mukherjee added.
Here’s what else is happening:
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The supreme court also expanded the constitution’s second amendment right “to keep and bear arms”. This includes a ruling that will remove a Hawaii law that required gun owners to get an owner’s permission before bringing a handgun on to private property open to the public – such as shops and restaurants.
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In Texas, it is expected that a new law will be put into place which would require almost 5 million school pupils to compulsorily study the Bible. This comes as part of a wider effort to put more Christian teachings into schools.
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Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will soon hold a meeting about whether to ease restrictions on access to some research peptides, a group of drugs with a zealous after and thin evidence to support them