If you want to avoid being prosecuted for mishandling classified information, you need to do one of two things. You should either win election to the presidency, or retain the president’s approval to mishandle classified information without leaving a paper trail.

John Bolton isn’t the president, and he failed manifestly on that second concern. That is why Donald Trump’s former national security advisor yesterday reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ). The deal will see Bolton avoid the decades of possible prison time he would have faced had he gone to trial and been convicted. Instead, the ardent Trump critic and former US ambassador to the United Nations will pay a $2.25 million fine, surrender his federal pension, and complete 100 hours of community service and three years of supervised release. Bolton also faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

Bolton and his supporters presented this case as a political witch hunt. The reality is different. The investigation into his mishandling of classified information began during the Biden administration and generated momentum following an Iranian hack of Bolton’s emails. The Trump administration essentially pushed an objectively motivated prosecution over the finish line, albeit to the obvious delight of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. After all, Bondi was under heavy pressure from Trump to weaponize her department against the President’s perceived enemies. She lost her job for failing to sate his appetite in this regard.

Still, Bolton’s case underlines the new reality when it comes to prosecutions involving classified information: you had better be too powerful to touch (the president), or too close to the president to touch. Consider the blockbuster New York Times report earlier this month on what was said and by whom in the White House Situation Room in response to the Epstein files. There have been repeated leaks to the press on the status of US negotiations with Iran and the content of just-concluded calls between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These leaks clearly came from senior administration sources and pertain to highly classified information. And yet there have been neither prosecutions nor reports of FBI investigations into the leaks.

Had a career military or intelligence officer been suspected of leaking this kind of information to the media, they would have faced immediate and severe sanctions. It is difficult for such individuals even to have friendships with journalists because of the reporting requirements and counterintelligence attention entailed. That those responsible for the Iran war leaks have faced no consequences underlines how FBI Director Kash Patel and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have zero interest in uncovering evidence of Trump allies in illegal acts. It’s not a question of investigative difficulty. Because of how tightly held some of the reported classified information would have been, any FBI investigation would immediately focus on a narrow list of possible suspects.

This rot goes to the top. Biden’s DOJ aggressively prosecuted Trump for his retention of numerous highly classified documents after his presidency. But when it came to Biden’s own willful retention of classified documents in his garage, among other places, the DOJ took a very different approach than it did towards his predecessor. Because of Biden’s apparent cognitive decline during DOJ interviews, the Department declined to bring charges. Yes, Trump refused to return the classified documents in his possession after months of demands from the government. But Biden’s conduct was also inexcusable: he had read many of his documents aloud to a ghostwriter, even saying he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs”.

The basic problem is that far too many politicians and political operatives now believe they have a get-out-of-jail-free card for leaking whatever classified information they wish. They must simply retain the perception of the president’s favor and avoid a paper trail. Yet these same individuals are the ones least knowledgeable about the risks of leaking classified information, or the masterful efforts that foreign intelligence services will go to get said information out of them, including adversaries such as China and allies such as Israel. The result is a situation which is both unethical and dangerous.

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Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

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