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WASHINGTON — John Bolton, a former top adviser to President Donald Trump who became one of his most outspoken critics, pleaded guilty Friday morning to mishandling classified information in a case that could send him to prison.

Bolton appeared in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., and admitted to a single charge of illegal retention of classified information over notes he compiled for a book that excoriated Trump.

“I’m sorry for it,” he told Judge Theodore Chuang, who said he would sentence Bolton in October.

Under the plea deal, Bolton could be incarcerated for up to five years, according to the terms of the plea deal described in court. The deal also includes a fine of $2.25 million. If Bolton had gone to trial and lost, he could have faced decades in prison.

When he was first indicted, Bolton sought to frame the case against him as part of a push by the president to misuse the Justice Department to punish his perceived political enemies. The case against Bolton, however, began in the first Trump administration and gained momentum during the Biden administration, as investigators gathered additional evidence.

The original 18-count indictment against Bolton accused him of using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of notes, which included national defense information, with two family members who did not have security clearances.

The accusations against Bolton center on his notes for The Room Where It Happened, his 2020 memoir about his time as Trump’s national security adviser. Those relatives were Bolton’s wife and daughter, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details of the case that were not in court filings.

According to the indictment, Bolton’s notes revealed that he understood that he was documenting intelligence secrets. One entry began, “The intel briefer said,” while another read, “While in the Situation Room, I learned.”

The first Trump administration fought unsuccessfully to prevent the publication of Bolton’s book, but the criminal investigation ultimately focused not on what was in the published manuscript, but instead on what Bolton wrote in private notes and correspondence.

Unlike some other investigations involving classified information, including charges filed in 2023 against Trump, Bolton was not accused of retaining the secret documents themselves, but rather of keeping diaries and sending emails that mentioned details of his daily work in national security.

Bolton’s emails, however, were later hacked by someone associated with the government of Iran, the indictment said.

“A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in or about July 2021,” according to the filing, “but did not tell the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information, including classified information, that Bolton had placed in the account from his time as national security adviser.”

One section of the indictment described Bolton apparently being taunted by his hacker. A message on July 25, 2021, warned, “I do not think you would be interested in the FBI being aware of the leaked content of John’s email (some of which have been attached).”

The email went on to declare: “This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the GOP side! Contact me before it’s too late.”

A representative for Bolton forwarded the email to the FBI.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

YANKTON, S.D. — Charl Kleinhaus did not like the direction his country was taking.

A white South African, Kleinhaus said the laws meant to empower Black people after the demise of the racist apartheid system had hurt his mining business. Violence in the country — a scourge affecting everyone, regardless of race — had become too much.

So Kleinhaus considered his options.

Some of his fellow Afrikaners, the ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid, had moved to Germany, but the language barrier was not ideal. He thought about Australia, but decided that moving his family thousands of miles from home would be too hard.

Then, in February of last year, Kleinhaus received what he described as “a message from above.” President Donald Trump had suspended refugee admissions to the United States, but he made an exception for people like Kleinhaus: white Afrikaners who claim they are victims of racial persecution in South Africa.

“It’s now a reverse apartheid,” Kleinhaus said, summing up his grievances about his homeland. “That’s what we are fighting about now.”

In a matter of months, Kleinhaus secured refugee status and moved with his family to the United States, completing a process that can take years under normal circumstances. Now, after a year in the country, he has settled in South Dakota, where he has found part-time work at a car dealership, a farm, and a brickyard while planning his next business.

Kleinhaus is among more than 6,000 South Africans — the vast majority of them white — who have benefited from Trump’s decision to upend America’s refugee program, which for decades had made the United States a sanctuary for people fleeing disaster and persecution.

Under Trump, the program has effectively become a whites-only path to life in the United States, a culmination of the president’s long-standing antipathy toward immigrants and his embrace of the concept of “reverse racism” as a guiding principle in his administration.

The president has fought to limit immigration for more than a decade, imposing travel bans on mostly African and Muslim-majority nations and making it much more difficult for people from those nations to obtain green cards. He has railed against affirmative action, and in an interview with the New York Times earlier this year said he believed civil rights-era protections had resulted in white people being “very badly treated.”

But few of Trump’s efforts are as striking as his efforts to turn the refugee program on its head, leaving thousands of people across the world sitting in refugee camps with no chance of entry into the United States, even as he created a workaround for Afrikaners.

The Trump administration has argued that the overhaul of its refugee program is necessary to prioritize refugees who can better assimilate into the United States.

“President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed, and driven off their property across South Africa,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “While the South African government and many in the media have brushed off the horrific lived experiences of this community, the Trump administration continues to process applications for refugee status because the president has a humanitarian heart.”

But critics of the policy who are involved in refugee resettlement say the Trump administration’s priorities have made it impossible to help people who have nowhere else to turn.

“It’s the moral and legal inversion of what this work is about,” said Jason Marks, a senior refugee officer who resigned from the Department of Homeland Security last year when Trump announced the effort to fast-track Afrikaners to the United States. “They are rolling out the red carpet for this group with a clear racial and political agenda at the expense of everyone else.”

‘Too many people’

Kleinhaus acknowledges that moving to the United States from South Africa’s Mpumalanga province was not his “last option.” He left behind resources: a Jaguar sports car, a Range Rover, and what he estimates is property worth at least $300,000. He plans to sell them all to bring in extra money.

But he also says many of his white relatives and friends were no longer safe in South Africa.

White farmers — a population that Trump has spotlighted in public remarks — have indeed been killed in vicious acts of violence in a country that suffers from a high murder rate. But so have Black South Africans and others, and police data does not support the idea that white South Africans are more likely to be targeted than any other group.

Kleinhaus also said his profits were suffering because of racial equity laws.

“You’re not going to get a big contract from a mining company if you’re not Black,” he said. “There’s too many people. How do you divide a small cake between such a big population? Yeah, you cannot.”

He said he felt no guilt about bringing his children and grandson to America to pursue a new life, even as families fleeing conflict in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Ukraine remained walled off.

“You can’t take in those hard-core war people,” said Kleinhaus, whose news feed is full of social media videos and memes promoting the idea that white people are targeted in South Africa. “You can’t put them in a first-world country, you’ll be mad.”

After allowing refugees from around the globe to enter the country for decades, the United States was now trying to “have some type of balance,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month that U.S. refugee policy must benefit Americans.

“Everything we do has to be geared by the national interest,” Rubio told lawmakers. He said, “It is in our national interest” to allow in people who can “quickly assimilate into society and be successful.”

Rep. Grace Meng (D., N.Y.) asked why the administration thought other refugees could not assimilate, including Afghans who had helped U.S. soldiers during the war, cleared vetting, and were now stuck in limbo.

“They have assimilated and contribute and pay taxes,” Meng said of Afghan refugees who had moved to her district in Queens, New York. “I think it’s important for America to keep our promise as well,” she added.

Some of the Afrikaners, who are the descendants of Dutch and other European settlers, have not acclimated as smoothly as the administration expected.

During their initial months in the United States, refugees typically can receive some money for housing and food from resettlement organizations who receive federal funding. Those organizations can also help them find work.

But refugees are expected to eventually be self-sufficient. The process is often a difficult one.

Multiple Afrikaners reported delays in receiving financial support from their local resettlement agency, according to complaints obtained by the New York Times. (The names of many of the refugees were omitted from the documents.) One of the families complained about needing to complete Medicaid and Social Security applications on their own. That same family griped about needing to use public transportation, according to the documents.

Another South African relocated to Texas said he felt staffers from the local resettlement agency, which has a Muslim affiliation, had “discriminated” against him as a Christian. The staff members who picked up his parents from the airport were candid about their views of Trump’s changes to the refugee program.

“They told my mother they cannot wait for next election when Trump can leave office as they had a problem with his decision to give South Africans refugee status and how angry they are that only South African refugees are now allowed,” according to the correspondence.

The newly arrived South African also said his family was placed in an apartment that was “dirty, contained mold, and is located in an unsafe area in Fort Worth.”

The complaints by the Afrikaners about their level of assistance also came after the Trump administration made cuts to funding for resettlement agencies and benefits that in the past were made available to new refugees, including food stamps.

At least three Afrikaners made the return after being settled in states including Minnesota, Idaho, and Illinois, according to government documents. Some had sick relatives back home. One Afrikaner said the process had “occurred quickly” and “she had not thoroughly thought through the process.”

“I think some of them are finding that actually it’s not an easy life to be a refugee,” said Bryony Fox, a lecturer at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, who researches forced displacement.

Claims of genocide

South African officials strongly dispute claims by Trump that Afrikaners are being targeted in a “genocide.”

During apartheid, which ended in 1994, the government denied Black South Africans the right to own prime agricultural land. That meant that almost all of the country’s large-scale commercial farmers were white, and that remains so to this day.

South Africa’s Commission for Employment Equity found that white people made up 61% of top management posts in 2024, while they are only 7.5% of the population. Black South Africans are also unemployed at far higher rates than their white peers, a disparity that has not improved over time.

To address the disparities, the African National Congress government has instituted racial equity laws that incentivize companies to have Black ownership and leadership. That Black Economic Empowerment initiative has prompted intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, as well as from Afrikaners fleeing to the United States who say it has harmed their businesses.

Kleinhaus said such policies make him as a white man feel targeted by the South African government. He said that he had struggled to keep thieves off his property and that his relatives had been the victims of violence, although he said getting into the specifics made him too emotional.

In his experience, white people are portrayed as “the problems in the economy” and “the privileged ones.”

“There’s no such thing as that,” Kleinhaus said. “Most whites have lost a lot.”

Fox said there was no denying the violence in South Africa.

“That is our biggest problem,” she said. “But it is not targeted. It is not systematic targeting.”

She said criminals had attacked farms because they “have resources that communities are seeking.”

Trump has echoed fringe claims about a white genocide in South Africa for years, going back to his first term. Last year, in a stunning confrontation in the Oval Office, Trump lectured the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, about his own country. Ramaphosa implored Trump to listen to “the voices of South Africans.”

The State Department does not break down its refugee data by race, but it has allowed in more than 6,600 refugees this fiscal year. All but three were from South Africa.

Trump’s aides have defended the program by saying that other racial minorities in majority-Black South Africa are welcome to apply for the refugee program.

South Africa also has minority populations of people of Indian descent, white people of British heritage, and mixed-race people — and a few individuals from those communities have been processed through Trump’s refugee program. But refugee resettlement officials say nearly all of those who have been accepted are white, and government documents confirm that the administration has prioritized resettling white Afrikaners.

Why white South Africans?

Long before Trump created the refugee program, many white South Africans traveled to the United States — from the Midwest to the Mississippi Delta — on temporary visas to work as seasonal farmers.

Since 2019, Kobus Van Den Berg has been traveling to and from the United States to plant soybeans and fertilize fields in North Dakota to save money for his family back home in South Africa. He agrees that crime is an issue in South Africa, but he pushed back on the notion that white South Africans are being singled out.

“They’ll attack anybody,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what color or race you are.”

He has watched as Afrikaners have come into the United States in recent months with refugee status and a pathway to citizenship, even as he has spent years navigating a complicated immigration system with the hopes of obtaining a green card.

“Why is it so easy for this other Afrikaner from South Africa to come over here?” Van Den Berg said. “The thing that blows everyone’s mind today is, why is it specifically white South Africans?”

Critics of the Trump administration say the answer lies not just in Trump’s long-standing embrace of the Afrikaners’ cause, or the administration’s desire for “assimilation,” but in his stance toward refugees more broadly.

Sharif Aly, the president of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said the policy shows an “indifference to the plight of nonwhite refugees.”

It is difficult to ascertain how rigorously the administration is vetting the South Africans. In the past, the process has been time-consuming, with agents demanding criminal records, medical records, and even social media posts.

The Trump administration has said it would deny immigration requests for those with antisemitic or “anti-American” posts on their social media accounts, but Kleinhaus was welcomed even though he had made antisemitic comments on social media. In April 2023, the X user @charlkleinhaus wrote in a now-deleted post that Jews were “untrustworthy” and “a dangerous group” and that “they are not Gods chosen.”

Kleinhaus said his grandmother was Jewish, he was not an antisemitic person and he had written the post in error while he was taking medication for a kidney stone. He also shared other posts that had been written by others.

During his processing, he said, he signed off on administration vetting of his social media accounts and no one brought up any problems.

‘Leaving everything behind’

Over breakfast at a local diner, the Fryn’ Pan Family Restaurant, Kleinhaus said he missed some aspects of his life in South Africa, including “the people, my workers, my friends, and family.”

But he also appreciates “these advantages that I’ve got here to do things I can do just as a white person” and not needing to worry about laws requiring him to sell a percentage of equity of his mining company to Black shareholders in South Africa “because they were here first or whatever the story can be.”

He said he was focused on working and contributing to the United States.

He said he did not complain when he, his son, daughter, and grandson were initially placed in one hotel room in Buffalo, N.Y. He soon identified a farmer in Yankton, S.D., who had hired seasonal workers from South Africa for years and was looking for more help.

Now, his daughter works at a flower shop in the small town of Yankton. His son works at another farm and his grandson has learned English quickly after knowing only Afrikaans.

And he has found part-time work at a car dealership and at a brickyard while he plans how to start his next business. He occasionally takes his grandson fishing in this area known for the Lewis and Clark trail on the weekends.

“I just want my kids to be successful,” he said.

Kleinhaus hopes he can convince other relatives to join him soon in America. He said he knows he cannot simply go back and visit, because that would undermine his claims of persecution.

“I’m leaving everything behind,” he said. “When you accept the refugee thing, it’s not a thing like, ‘I’ll be back in two weeks; I’m going on holiday.’ It’s nothing like that. You’re saying, ‘It’s done. I’m not going back.’”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.