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John Bolton

American lawyer and diplomat (born 1948)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ311269 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Robert Bolton (born November 20, 1948) is an American attorney, diplomat, Republican consultant, and political commentator. He served as the 25th United States ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as the 26th United States national security advisor from 2018 to 2019.

Bolton also acted as a United States assistant attorney general for President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He served in the State Department as the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 1989 to 1993, and the under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs from 2001 to 2005. He was an advocate of the Iraq War as a Director of the Project for the New American Century, which favored going to war with Iraq.

He was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, as a recess appointee by President George W. Bush. He stepped down at the end of his recess appointment in December 2006 because he was unlikely to win confirmation in the Senate, of which the Democratic Party had control at the time. Bolton later served as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019. He repeatedly called for the termination of the Iran nuclear deal, from which the U.S. withdrew in May 2018. He wrote a best-selling book about his tenure in the Trump administration, The Room Where It Happened, published in 2020.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “John Bolton” as american lawyer and diplomat (born 1948). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Bolton and American.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 2005, 2006, 2018—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-11-20. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with John, Bolton and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “John Bolton”, the useful work is to connect “american lawyer and diplomat (born 1948)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311269. VIAF identifies the subject as 25806519. The Library of Congress control number is no89017580. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2005, 2006 and 2018.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John Bolton”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John Bolton primary sources, John Bolton archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “John Bolton”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Bolton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.