The United States government sued former National Security Advisor John Bolton, accusing him of breach of contract and claiming publication of his book would put out classified information.
The lawsuit, filed by a U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., follows up on a threat leveled by President Trump that his former aide would experience ‘criminal problems’ if he went ahead with his tell-all, which claims Trump is willing to ‘endanger or weaken’ the U.S. to get reelected.
But it is not clear DOJ would force a stop in publication.
The Justice Department is asking the court to ‘instruct or request” that that his publisher delay publication, allowing for the completion of a standard security review that has gone on for months.
The United States government sued former National Security Advisor John Bolton, r, accusing him of breach of contract and claiming publication of his book would put out classified information
It asks that his publisher, Simon & Schuster, ‘retrieve and dispose’ of copies of the book.
The government also wants a judge to give taxpayers the right to claw back any earnings Bolton gets – following reports he got a $2 million advance.
Through the course of his job, Bolton ‘regularly came into possession of some of the most sensitive classified information that exists in the U.S. government,’ according to the suit, the Associated Press reported.
Trump fired Bolton in September after more than a year on the job – although Bolton says he quit first.
The government – an extraordinary effort to restrain release of a book before it is published – comes after Bolton has already kicked his press tour into gear and sat for an interview with ABC News.
On Monday, the network announced that Bolton had taped a primetime sit-down interview with Martha Raddatz that will air Sunday night.
Trump said Monday that ‘every conversation’ with him is ‘highly classified’
The suit was filed by a U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. a day after Trump and Bill Barr (pictured) spoke about the coming release of the book
John Bolton (left), President Trump’s former national security adviser, sat down for his first interview about his blockbuster book with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz (right). The interview will be a primetime Sunday night special, the network announced Monday
The book’s epilogue describes battles with the White House over publication of the book, which is likely to continue to play out this week in court
President Trump said Monday that every conversation with him is ‘highly classified’ thus suggesting that if former National Security Advisor John Bolton goes ahead with releasing his book he could face ‘criminal problems’
Anticipating the rollout, Trump said Monday that ‘every conversation’ with him is ‘highly classified’ suggesting former National Security Advisor John Bolton could face criminal prosecution for the contents of his forthcoming tell-all about working in the Trump White House.
That is a claim Bolton’s lawyers are certain to contest in court. The book is already in first place on Amazon’s best-seller list.
‘I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified,’ Trump told reporters Monday. ‘So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out he’s broken the law. I would think he would have criminal problems,’ Trump added.
The memoir paints a picture of ‘chaos’ in the White House and a president focused exclusively on his own reelection, the book’s publisher is promising. The book runs 592 pages, and according to the publisher touches on a range of countries where Trump exhibited inappropriate conduct.
‘I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,’ Bolton writes.
At the White House Monday, Barr said the current goal was to get Bolton to finalize the National Security Council security review process, in comments that were not as accusatory as Trump’s.
‘The thing that is front-and-center right now is trying to get him to complete the process, go through the process and make the necessary deletions of classified information,’ Barr said.
In a June 10 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Bolton’s lawyer Chuck Cooper said the process was anything but standard.
‘What followed was perhaps the most extensive and intensive prepublication review in NSC history,’ Cooper said.
The House Intelligence Committee sought to bring Bolton in for testimony during its impeachment probe into Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine, but he didn’t participate, to the consternation of some Democrats who said he was saving material for his book.