Bolton Pleads Guilty as Trump Faces Legal Setbacks on Voting, Immigration
In a day of major legal developments, former National Security Advisor John Bolton pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information, while a federal judge blocked key parts of President Trump’s executive order limiting mail-in voting and the Supreme Court cleared the way for mass deportations of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from Haiti and Syria.
Bolton’s Guilty Plea
John Bolton, who served as President Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 before becoming a vocal critic, pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of retention of national defense information. Appearing before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang in Greenbelt, Maryland, Bolton told the court, “And I am sorry for it,” according to NPR.
Under the plea agreement, Bolton faces up to five years in federal prison and must pay a $2.25 million fine, with half due within five days of sentencing. He will also forfeit any government retirement benefits. Sentencing is scheduled for October 28.
Bolton was originally indicted in October 2025 on 18 criminal counts for retention and transmission of national defense information. Prosecutors said he regularly took handwritten notes from meetings with intelligence and military officials and sent more than a thousand pages of sensitive material to two family members via text messages and an AOL email account. After Bolton left the administration in 2019, hackers believed to be linked to the Iranian government gained access to that email account.
Hayden O’Byrne, acting deputy assistant attorney general for the national security division, said the plea “should be a warning to anyone at any level of government that if you leak America’s secrets or if you mishandle them, the Department of Justice will be there to prosecute you.”
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said his client “took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information.”
The case stands in contrast to Trump’s own classified documents case, which was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge. Legal experts quoted by NPR described the Bolton prosecution as legitimate and distinct from politically motivated cases.
Federal Judge Blocks Mail-In Voting Order
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston blocked key provisions of President Trump’s March executive order that sought to limit mail-in voting. The ruling applies to this fall’s general election and earlier races in nearly two dozen mainly Democratic-led states plus Washington, D.C., NPR reported.
Trump’s order called for the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to create lists of eligible voters and for USPS to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on those lists. Judge Talwani found that the directives exceed the president’s constitutional authority, writing in a 37-page opinion: “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”
The ruling was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to the administration’s voting policies. Earlier this week, a federal appeals panel blocked DOJ efforts to access Michigan’s voter rolls, a federal judge permanently barred key parts of an earlier voting executive order, and another judge ruled that the administration’s voter data aggregation efforts are unlawful.
The SAVE America Act Standoff
Meanwhile, President Trump continues to block bipartisan legislation — including a housing affordability bill — demanding that Congress first pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping elections overhaul. The bill currently lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster, according to NPR.
The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, photo ID to cast a ballot, and mandate that states purge noncitizens from voter rolls and submit complete voter lists to the Trump administration. Experts say noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and the bill’s provisions have drawn legal challenges.
Supreme Court Clears TPS Deportations
In a separate major ruling, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 along ideological lines in Mullin v. Doe to allow the Trump administration to immediately strip Temporary Protected Status from roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, paving the way for their deportation, Euronews reported.
Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito dismissed arguments that Trump’s derogatory remarks about Haitian migrants demonstrated racial bias. Justice Elena Kagan, in a sharp dissent, wrote that the majority “declines to put in print” statements by the president that she described as “so repellent and racially inflected.”
Around 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the economy. The State Department currently advises against all travel to both Haiti and Syria, citing widespread violence.
What’s Next
Bolton’s sentencing in October will mark the culmination of a case that has drawn attention to the disparity between how the Justice Department has treated former Trump officials and Trump himself. The voting rights battles are expected to continue through appeals, with the Trump administration likely to challenge Judge Talwani’s ruling. And for hundreds of thousands of TPS holders, the Supreme Court decision leaves families in limbo, uncertain how much time they have before they must leave the country.