Trump Admin Sues Bolton To Block Book Publication

Just as President Trump said would happen yesterday, the U.S. government has sued Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton to block the publication of his so-called tell-all book which claims the president was willing to endanger the nation in order to be re-elected.

As we previously detailed, Bolton served under Trump as the U.S. national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.

His book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which was initially set to be published earlier this year, is currently scheduled to be released next Tuesday.

According to a news release from the book’s publisher, the book claims that  “Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy — and Bolton documents exactly what those were.”

In the epilogue of the memoir, Bolton reportedly alleges Trump’s actions towards his new book were, at times, “constitutionally impermissible” and that the president has tried multiple times to delay it from moving to print.

Last week, per the New York Times, the White House attempted to slow its publication, arguing the book contained classified information and could present a security threat.

“I will consider every 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,” Trump continued threateningly.

And now, as Axios reports, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday seeking to block publication of the book on June 23, claiming that Bolton has failed to complete a pre-publication review for classified information.

The United States is not seeking to censor any legitimate aspect of Defendant’s manuscript; it merely seeks an order requiring Defendant to complete the prepublication review process and to take all steps necessary to ensure that only a manuscript that has been officially authorized through that process—and is thus free of classified information—is disseminated publicly.

Given that Defendant has already taken steps to disclose or publish the manuscript to unauthorized persons without prior written authorization, the United States also seeks an order establishing a constructive trust on any profits obtained from the disclosure or dissemination of The Room Where it Happened, particularly if Defendant refuses to complete the prepublication review process and obtain the required prior written authorization before proceeding with publishing the book.

– Justice Department

Bolton’s lawyer claims that his client has already undergone four months of prepublication review, and that the White House has purposely stalled the process as a “transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton.”