Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton pleaded guilty on Friday to a felony count of unlawfully retaining sensitive national security information. This development resolved a case that had been closely watched as a test of Justice Department prosecutions of President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies. Bolton previously described the charge as a weaponization of federal law enforcement that “distort[ed] the facts.”

Bolton, 77, entered the plea in federal court before US District Judge Theodore D. Chuang. He admitted that he was guilty and was “sorry for it.” Bolton specifically admitted to count 12 of an 18-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in October. Prosecutors will not seek a prison term longer than five years, and Bolton agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine. He also agreed to forfeit his federal retirement pay, perform 100 hours of community service, and submit to a debriefing with national security officials about the information he had kept. The deal resolves all counts, with the remaining charges slated for the scheduled October 28 sentencing. Bolton may withdraw the plea if the judge imposes a sentence harsher than the agreement contemplates.

According to prosecutors and court documents, Bolton, during his tenure as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, copied highly sensitive classified material he learned through his official duties into personal “diary” entries chronicling his daily activities. The Justice Department said the entries contained information classified as high as top secret. This included sensitive compartmented information, foreign adversaries’ military plans, covert US operations abroad, and intelligence on foreign leaders. Bolton transmitted more than 1,000 pages of the material to his wife and daughter. They had been using personal email accounts and a commercial messaging app to receive unauthorized classified information, prosecutors said. He also kept copies at his Maryland home, for which he lacked authorization.

The Department said that after Bolton left office, a hacker whom he believed hailed from Iran broke into his personal email account. Bolton reported the breach to law enforcement but did not mention that the account contained national defense information. FBI agents raided his Bethesda home and his Washington office in August. US Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, whose office prosecuted the case with the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said Bolton understood the damage that mishandling classified material could cause and that he put American lives at risk. Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said his client “did what real leaders do” by taking responsibility. She also stated that Bolton spared the government a trial that could have exposed additional sensitive information.

The plea makes Bolton the first of several Trump adversaries that the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted. Cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James faltered after a judge found that the prosecutor bringing them had been unlawfully appointed. Unlike those prosecutions, people familiar with the matter have described Bolton’s case as resting on the work of career prosecutors and as more firmly grounded in the law.

Bolton had argued that the charges were an intimidation tactic by Trump. A longtime Republican foreign policy hawk, Bolton was pushed out of the administration in 2019. Later, he published The Room Where It Happened, a memoir critical of Trump that the administration unsuccessfully tried to block. The conduct he admitted to on Friday concerned his private diary notes, not the contents of the book.