By Aaron Miller-
The Trump administration has asked a federal judge on Tuesday to order federate statues banning the publication of a book by former National Security Adviser, John Bolton.
The publisher, Simon and Schuster, said the book would deliver an inside look at the White House during Bolton’s 519 days as national security adviser. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” the book says, according to material provided Simon and Schuster.
Bolton’s book,”The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is set to lay out examples of international misconduct that many Americans will deem reproachable, according to insiders.
The tell -all explosive book has already shipped to warehouses ahead of its scheduled release. He has also recorded an interview with ABC to air on Sunday.
Trump’s lawsuit argues that Bolton had breached non-disclosure agreements and risks national security by exposing classified information.
“The United States is not seeking to censor any legitimate aspect” of the manuscript, the Justice Department lawsuit says. It claims, instead, that Bolton hasn’t finished with the review process required of any author who had a government security clearance.
The suit, filed in Washington, DC, federal court, alleges that Bolton’s 500-plus page manuscript was “rife with classified information,” and prosecutors say that Bolton’s book did not undergo a vetting process for the book in accordance with his obligations.
Trump was told shortly after by a senior NSC official that it contained significant amounts of classified information, including material designated as top secret.
“(Bolton) struck a bargain with the United States as a condition of his employment in one of the most sensitive and important national security positions in the United States Government and now wants to renege on that bargain by unilaterally deciding that the pre publication review process is complete and deciding for himself whether classified information should be made public,” prosecutors state.
Trump said any conversations with him are classified and hinted at possible legal action.
“They’re in court or they’ll soon be in court,” Trump said. “But he understands he did not complete a process or anywhere near complete a process.”
Unflattering
Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, said in a statement Tuesday that the lawsuit “is nothing more than the latest in a long running series of efforts by the Administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the President.”
“Ambassador Bolton has worked in full cooperation with the NSC in its pre-publication review to address its concerns and Simon & Schuster fully supports his First Amendment right to tell the story of his time in the White House to the American public,” the statement said.
An exhaustive back-and-forth between Bolton, his lawyer and the White House over the prepublication review process is detailed in the suit. Bolton, who left the White House in September, submitted his original draft late last year to the White House for the vetting process, and was told shortly after by a senior NSC official that it contained significant amounts of classified information, including material designated as top secret.
The review came at the request of Robert O’Brien, Bolton’s successor as national security adviser, according to the lawsuit.
In a letter sent to Bolton’s lawyer on Thursday, the NSC legal adviser wrote that “the manuscript still contains classified information, because, among other things, it includes information that he himself classified and designated for declassification only after the lapse of twenty-five years.”
Trump said any conversations with him are classified, as he indicated the prospect of legal confrontation over the books content.
“They’re in court or they’ll soon be in court,” Trump said. “But he understands he did not complete a process or anywhere near complete a process.”
Trump said Bolton would have “criminal problems” if the book was published as is. The lawsuit filed Tuesday is a civil suit, and carries no criminal penalties. Initially, Attorney General William Barr did not confirm that his department was preparing a lawsuit but said the administration was focused on getting Bolton to complete the clearance process for publishing books.
“People who come to work in the government and have access to sensitive information generally sign an agreement that says when they leave government, if they write something that draws on or might reflect some of the information they’ve head access to, they have to go through a clearance process before they can publish the book,” Barr said on Monday.
“We don’t think Bolton has gone through that process, hasn’t completed that process.”
In addition to the delayed publication, the administration is asking the court to order Bolton’s publisher to “retrieve and dispose” of any copies of the book that have already been disseminated. They also ask for any money the book earns from its sales — or the sale of movie rights from it — in the event that it is published without a completed prepublication review.
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union compared the suit to the Nixon administration’s failed attempt to block newspapers’ publication of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed a secret history of the Vietnam War.
“A half-century ago the Supreme Court rejected a similar attempt by the Nixon administration to block the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and since then it has been firmly established that prior restraints on publication are unconstitutional and un-American,” the ACLU said.