President Trump may hate being the target of lawfare, but he sure knows how to wield it against anyone who crosses him. That’s the story of John Bolton, his former national security adviser, who is agreeing to a plea deal essentially for the sin of writing a critical book about his time advising Mr. Trump.

The President has been determined to seek revenge against Mr. Bolton, who wrote his well-regarded memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” based on his 17 months running the National Security Council in Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Trump first tried and failed to block publication, then went to court to confiscate the royalties. He lost that fight too. But on Mr. Trump’s return to office, his Justice Department charged Mr. Bolton with a coercive 18-count indictment for keeping diary notes on a home computer that included “national defense information.”

Mr. Bolton has now decided to plead guilty to a single felony count for retaining classified information. He will pay a $2.5 million fine, which is best understood as an attempt to deny Mr. Bolton the earnings from the book.

Like most similar defendants, Mr. Bolton had little choice other than to negotiate a plea. A trial could cost as much as $3 million in legal fees and run the risk of greater punishment. He is 77 years old, and a guilty verdict could have meant a de facto life sentence. Mr. Trump’s prosecutors threatened more charges if Mr. Bolton didn’t submit to a plea. After a life devoted to public service or writing for think tanks, he isn’t a wealthy man.

Especially troubling and truly vindictive, therefore, is that Justice is still insisting that Mr. Bolton go to prison. The concession prosecutors have made is that they won’t ask for a sentence longer than five years. Mr. Bolton will instead ask the court for probation, which is far more suitable for the single offense, but a judge will decide.

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. He submitted the book draft to the White House for vetting for classified material, and it was cleared for publication by Ellen Knight, the senior director at the time for pre-publication review.

Many officials have kept diaries or journals that they later used to inform their books, including Carter-era NSC adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The law expressly anticipates that pre-publication review could discover classified information. But under this Bolton standard, anyone who submits a book or article draft that contains classified material could potentially be charged with a crime.

Prison time would be especially unjust given the punishments for others who admitted to offenses dealing with classified information. Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s NSC adviser, hid documents from the National Archives in his socks but paid only a $50,000 fine and received two years of probation.

CIA director John Deutch had classified documents on his home computer. Mr. Clinton pardoned him before Justice could finalize an agreement in which he would plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $5,000 fine. CIA director David Petraeus, who shared defense information with his biographer, received two years probation and a $100,000 fine. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor under the same provision, Section 793, that Mr. Bolton is pleading under as a felony.

Mr. Bolton continues to be under a death threat from Iran, and he must pay for his own security after Mr. Trump removed his government protection at the start of his second term. Iran hacked his AOL account in 2021, after he had left government, and Mr. Bolton voluntarily reported that to the FBI. Iran could have him killed by criminal mercenaries in prison for as little as a pack of cigarettes.

As we said at the time of its publication, it was bad political form to publish his book while Mr. Trump was still in office.

But no one outside the Trump acclamation chorus believes that John Bolton would have been prosecuted had he written a book that was favorable to Donald Trump.

— The Wall Street Journal