© AP/Carolyn KosterFormer national security advisor John Bolton
The Trump administration sued former White House National Security Adviser John R. Bolton on Tuesday to block the release of his new book next week, saying
he never completed a required government review to scrub classified information. The breach-of-contract suit filed by the Justice Department in federal court says the action seeks to stop Mr. Bolton "from compromising national security." It says that in his former post in the White House, Mr. Bolton had "a high-level role in which he regularly came into possession of some of the most sensitive classified information that exists in the U.S. government."
Although Mr. Bolton did remove some classified information from the manuscript, the National Security Council has determined that
some secrets remain in his book, up to several paragraphs in length.The lawsuit states:
"In fact, the NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels.
"Accordingly, the publication and release of The Room Where it Happened would cause irreparable harm, because the disclosure of instances of classified information in the manuscript reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage, to the national security of the United States."
The complaint comes a week before the scheduled June 23 release of the book by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Bolton, who was dismissed by President Trump in September 2019 after a series of foreign-policy disagreements, reportedly was paid $2 million for the tell-all manuscript.
Mr. Trump said this week that he hopes Mr. Bolton is found criminally liable for disclosing classified information. In meetings, Mr. Bolton was known as a fanatical note-taker, a habit that displeases the president.
Comment: Stay tuned. This fight is just beginning!
Bolton is apparently on shaky legal ground and according to Trump he will run afoul the law if the book is published as is:
Trump indicated that his administration will do everything to prevent it from seeing the light of the day. Speaking alongside Attorney General Bill Bar on Monday, Trump took a dig at Bolton, saying that his former national security advisor "should not call himself an 'ambassador' since he was never confirmed by the Senate," and that he "gave him a break" by cherry-picking him for a position that did not require Senate confirmation.
"I can't imagine that he can [write a book], because that's highly classified information. Even conversations with me - they are highly classified. I told that to the Attorney General before. I would consider any conversation with me as president highly classified.
"So that would mean if he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he's broken the law and I would think he would have criminal problems...has been known not to tell the truth a lot."
With the Trump administration preparing for a legal war with Bolton, his lawyer Chuck Cooper has accused the White House of trying to silence his client using the pretext of US national security. Cooper claimed that the National Security Council employees had reviewed the book for months before indicating that it was good to go in late April, but then the White House intervened, and Trump's deputy counsel for national security John A. Eisenberg told them on June 8 that the book contained classified information.
See also:
Comment: Stay tuned. This fight is just beginning!
Bolton is apparently on shaky legal ground and according to Trump he will run afoul the law if the book is published as is: See also: