John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, according to CNN, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
Under the agreement, Bolton will pay a fine of more than $2 million. A single count of illegal retention carries a possible sentence of up to 60 months in prison.
A court hearing is currently scheduled for June 26.
Bolton was originally charged in Maryland with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and ten counts of retention of national defense information. The charges centered on diary-like entries from his time in the Trump White House that were allegedly kept at his residence.
Prosecutors accused him of sharing more than 1,000 pages of information through his personal email with two unauthorized individuals - reportedly his wife and daughter - though these transmission allegations are not part of the plea deal.
Related: Eyebrow-Raising Details Emerge From FBI Raid On John Bolton's Home
According to the indictment, Bolton used personal email and messaging accounts to transmit Top Secret intelligence about foreign adversaries, future attacks, and U.S. foreign-policy relations. He also kept classified files at his home, including sensitive intelligence about foreign leaders and U.S. intelligence sources.
The FBI Baltimore Field Office led the investigation, with oversight from the Justice Department's National Security Division. The indictment outlines two core allegations:
Eight counts of transmission of NDI under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. §793(d)),
and Ten counts of unlawful retention of NDI under §793(e).
The investigation intensified after Bolton’s email was breached by suspected Iranian hackers, during which investigators discovered the classified “diary-like entries.”
Bolton served as Trump’s National Security Adviser for one year before becoming a prominent critic of the president. Trump has repeatedly called for Bolton’s arrest, particularly over his 2020 memoir that was highly critical of the administration and allegedly contained classified information.
While the first Trump Justice Department opened investigations into the book in 2020, those probes were closed within a year. A new investigation was launched the following year after the email breach.
Developing...
Tyler Durden Thu, 06/04/2026 - 10:31Concerns over the New World screwworm (NWS) have been building for the last 12 months as the deadly cattle parasite spread through Mexico and the Trump administration attempted to prevent its spread into the U.S. Those concerns have now turned into red alerts after the USDA confirmed a single case in Texas, marking the first U.S. detection in years.
"A case of NWS may have been detected in South Texas. The sample is now at USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, lowa for confirmatory testing. We will provide updates the moment results are available," USDA wrote on X.
A case of NWS may have been detected in South Texas. The sample is now at USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, lowa for confirmatory testing. We will provide updates the moment results are available.
We have already activated personnel on the ground…
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote on X that the "confirmed the detection of a New World Screwworm (NWS) fly in a 3-week-old bovine in Zavala County, Texas."
As expected, @USDA_APHIS confirmed the detection of a New World Screwworm (NWS) fly in a 3 week old bovine in Zavala County, Texas. @USDA and Texas Animal Health @TAHC officials are taking immediate action to contain and eradicate NWS from the area.
For more… https://t.co/GJkUJl0XEI
USDA states that there is currently no evidence that NWS has become established in the U.S., but the agency is moving quickly with quarantines, movement controls, surveillance within a 12-mile zone of the detection area, and the release of sterile flies to contain any spread.
The detection of NWS in the U.S. would be a direct biological and economic shock to the cattle herd if the spread were rampant, given that the nation’s herd is already at a 75-year low, beef prices are at record highs, and meatpackers are under pressure from fewer and more expensive animals.
If NWS were established in the U.S., this could delay herd rebuilding at the worst possible time. Reuters notes that a spreading outbreak could further hit the herd and expose Texas livestock alone to roughly $1.8 billion in estimated economic losses.
A spread of NWS would be bullish for live cattle futures and beef prices, bearish for meatpackers, such as Tyson Foods, that need cattle heads, and supportive of animal-health names tied to treatments and parasite control.
Perhaps the U.S. importing 60% of its live cattle from third-world Mexico is not the best idea.
Tyler Durden Thu, 06/04/2026 - 10:20The private credit gates are shutting all over again.
After virtually every marquee private credit fund limited withdrawals after being flooded with redemptions requests in Q1, we are seeing more of the same as the second quarter rolls out.
And two days after Cliffwater LLC capped redemptions at 5% after investors requested 17% to be returned, a jump from the 14.0% in Q1 (which was also gated at the 5%) limit, this morning Bloomberg reports that Blackstone has also limited redemptions from its flagship private credit fund for the first time after investors sought to pull 10% of the shares, the latest such fund to cap withdrawals amid a continued investor exodus.
The $79 billion Blackstone Private Credit Fund told shareholders that it would return 5% of its shareholders’ money, according to a filing
Thursday. During the previous quarter, the fund allowed investors to redeem a record 7.9% after tapping senior executives to help finance the withdrawals with hundreds of millions of their own cash.
This time - realizing that the avalanche of redemptions requests will not ease for a long time - the company did not bother with coming up with a creative solution to avoid gating... and gated investors, joining all of its other peers in doing so.
Of course, Blackstone told shareholders that repurchases began to decelerate during the back end of its tender offer period, although as the chart below shows, we will have to wait until Q3 to see if that is true.
Across the $1.8 trillion private credit market, redemption requests are expected to increase this quarter as investors redouble efforts to claw back money after being restricted. What is concerning, is that despite the recent surge in software stocks - driven entirely by positioning and not fundamentals - private credit continues to feel the pain of investor revulsion to BDC's overreliance on sottware cash flows, suggesting that the recently meltup in software stocks is due to a major pullback as soon as the marketwide gamma squeeze fizzles.
Tyler Durden Thu, 06/04/2026 - 09:45