Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced that is has struck a plea bargain with Trump v1.0 official, and Trump v2.0 critic, John Bolton over charges related to classified information. Bolton will plead guilty to one count of mishandling classified information, will pay a fine of $2.25 million, and will face a sentence of up to 60 months. It is hard to imagine he will serve anything close to that, but we won't know for sure until a judge decides. It is entirely possible that, at 77 years of age, Bolton will serve no time at all.
On one hand, Bolton is getting a raw deal here. There is no chance that he would have faced this kind of scrutiny, and that he would have been assessed this harsh a penalty, if he was not regardad as an enemy by the Trump administration. Certainly, Bolton's crimes, when it comes to mishandling classified information, are but a drop in the bucket as compared to the crimes of Trump, vis-à-vis the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago.
On the other hand, Bolton clearly did commit a crime, and the sentencing guidelines are statutory, and were not invented just for him. Further, on a karmaic level, he's a warmonger who has no problem with sacrificing the bodies and lives of American soldiers in service of his neocon fantasies. He's also a Grade-A jerk who is famously abusive to his underlings. So, it's hard to feel too badly for him.
In any event, the Trump Department of Justice "got" one of its targets—the only one it had an actual, viable case against. The President better celebrate heartily, because we don't foresee many—or any—other victories of this sort in the future. (Z)