Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper blasted President Donald Trump for going after his former national security adviser-turned-nemesis John Bolton, calling the administration’s efforts “especially troubling and truly vindictive.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board unloaded on Trump, 79, on Thursday after reports emerged that Bolton, 77, had reached a tentative plea deal with prosecutors over his mishandling of classified documents while preparing notes for his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, about his time serving in Trump’s White House.
Bolton is expected to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents. Bolton has also agreed to pay a fine in excess of $2 million, which is “best understood as an attempt to deny Mr. Bolton the earnings from the book,” the paper’s editorial board said.
Any agreement must still be approved by a judge. Bolton is expected to enter his plea at a June 26 re-arraignment hearing.
Bolton could face anywhere from no prison time to a maximum sentence of five years. But the Journal argued that prosecutors had placed Bolton in an untenable position, as defending himself at trial could have cost him up to $3 million in legal fees.
“Mr. Trump’s prosecutors threatened more charges if Mr. Bolton didn’t submit to a plea,” the paper’s editorial board said. “After a life devoted to public service or writing for think tanks, he isn’t a wealthy man.”
Given his age, the paper argued that a conviction and prison sentence could have amounted to a “de facto life sentence.”
It is “especially troubling and truly vindictive” that the Trump administration still insists that Bolton be imprisoned, the editorial board added.
Bolton was charged by the Justice Department last October. Prosecutors accused him of mishandling classified documents, including some containing top-secret national defense information, during and after his service in the Trump administration in 2018 and 2019. He pleaded not guilty at the time.
“Mr. Bolton isn’t pleading to transmitting classified information, and he didn’t bring documents home. He wrote diary notes based on his memory that informed his book,” the editorial said.
The paper noted that a draft of Bolton’s memoir was submitted to the White House for classification review and was ultimately cleared for publication.
“The law expressly anticipates that pre-publication review could discover classified information,” the Journal wrote. “But under this Bolton standard, anyone who submits a book or article draft that contains classified material could potentially be charged with a crime.”
While the newspaper said it considered Bolton’s decision to publish the memoir while Trump remained in office “bad political form,” no one outside the “Trump acclamation chorus” believes he would have faced Trump’s wrath if the book were written favorably of the president.
The Journal has criticized Trump throughout his second term in the White House, angering the president, who last May said the “rotten” newspaper had “gone to hell.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Justice Department for comment.
Bolton is just one of several victims of Trump’s personal revenge tour against high-profile foes since returning to the White House for a second term last January. The president has also gone after those who worked on the 2016 Russia collusion probe, his two impeachments, and the congressional inquiry into the January 6 riot at the Capitol in 2021.
