President Donald Trump said on Friday he wants his former national security adviser, John Bolton, to be treated “harshly” after the latter pleaded guilty to unlawfully retaining classified information.
“John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!” Trump posted 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!” the president concluded.
The statement came hours after Bolton entered his guilty plea at a federal court in Maryland. The criminal case stemmed from his mishandling of sensitive national security records after leaving the first Trump administration.
“I was never much of a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said earlier this month. “He’s a bad guy, John Bolton, he’s a dirty guy, and we caught him.”
Bolton had originally been indicted last fall on 18 counts related to his transmission and retention of national defense information. He ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of retaining classified information as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
The former national security official, as alleged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, kept over 1,000 pages of “secret” and “top secret” information in private diary entries that he shared with two family members via email. A hacker with ties to Iran later obtained access to his personal email account filled with classified information.
“I am sorry for it,” he said in confessing his actions to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang earlier Friday.
JOHN BOLTON PLEADS GUILTY TO ONE COUNT OF MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
Under the plea agreement, Bolton faces up to five years in prison and has to pay $2.25 million. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 28.
Following his dismissal as national security adviser in 2019, Bolton became highly critical of Trump. He devoted that energy to a 2020 memoir focused on Trump’s unconventional foreign policy approach, titled The Room Where It Happened. Before working for Trump, Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 under then-President George W. Bush.
