The Trump administration filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to prevent the publication of the book by former national security adviser John Bolton, which is expected to provide an overwhelming insider portrait of the White House.
The Justice Department alleged in its complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, that publication of the book could “jeopardize national security” by revealing classified information to which Bolton had access during his turbulent 17 month stay in the White House.
The trial indicates that Bolton failed to have the text verified, which means that his book would be “clearly in violation of the agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of access to highly classified information “.
The book “The room where it happened: a memoir from the White House” should be released next Tuesday.
Bolton, a veteran Washington insider and a controversial figure for his long-standing hawkish views, was a close adviser to President Donald Trump.
He is said to have taken meticulous notes during his various meetings with Trump and other senior officials.
After the two broke up, Bolton threatened in January to become a main witness against Trump in the US leader’s recall trial, but only if the Senate had issued a subpoena.
The administration put pressure on the Republican majority in the house and opposition Democrats did not get the votes to issue a subpoena forcing Bolton to testify.
Bolton left in September after disapproving of Trump’s diplomatic relations with his adversaries, including North Korea and the Afghan Taliban. Since then, the two have become overtly hostile, and Bolton’s book has been touted as a revealer of the Oval Office.
“This is the book Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read,” teased editors Simon and Schuster.
In particular, Bolton alleges that Trump has committed a multitude of impenetrable offenses beyond the pressures on Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden.
“Doomed to fail”
Bolton, in the epilogue to the book, also accuses Trump of having seized documents from Bolton’s advisers, blocking his Twitter account and “making threats of censorship,” according to Axios.
The government says Bolton broke the basic rules of secrecy after refusing to wait for the National Security Council to review the text, as required.
The NSC found “significant amounts of classified information which it asked the defendant to delete,” the court file said, but the “defendant apparently became dissatisfied with the examination of the NSC”.
He said Bolton and the publishers would have resolved to publish the book on June 23 “without the defendant giving notice to the NSC” or completed the pre-publication review process.
“Simply put, the defendant has entered into an agreement with the United States as a condition of his employment in one of the most sensitive and important national security posts of the United States government and now wants to reverse this agreement . “
The mustachioed 71-year-old retweeted statements from rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, on Tuesday that indicated a similar effort 50 years ago by the Nixon administration to remove The Pentagon Papers, which was dismissed by the Supreme Court.
“Any effort by the Trump administration to prevent the publication of John Bolton’s book is doomed to failure,” said the ACLU.
Bolton has previously spoken with some American press networks to have interviews aired before the date of publication.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
