Trump administration sues to block publication of John Bolton's book

The Trump administration has sued to block the publication of a forthcoming book by John Bolton, the US president’s former security adviser, about his time in the White House, arguing that it contained classified information and would compromise national security.

The civil lawsuit came one day after Trump said Bolton would be breaking the law if the book were published. Trump fired Bolton last September after roughly 17 months as national security adviser.

Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, will be a critical account of the Trump administration, according to the publisher.

Bolton “shows a president addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government”, per Simon & Schuster.

In a statement, Simon & Schuster said 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”.

The lawsuit alleges that Bolton’s manuscript is “rife with classified information” and alleges that Bolton backed out of a White House vetting process for the book.

The justice department is requesting that a federal court order Bolton to “instruct or request” that his publisher further delay publication of the book to allow for a completion of the national security review process and to “retrieve and dispose” of existing copies in a manner acceptable to the government. The justice department also is asking a federal court to grant it the rights to all proceeds Bolton earns from the publication of the book.

Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper has said that the administration’s efforts to block publication are “a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr Bolton, in violation of his constitutional rights to speak on matters of the utmost public import”. Cooper has said Bolton worked for months with classification specialists to avoid releasing classified material.

The widely anticipated book is set to make explosive claims about the Trump White House, including that the president has committed “Ukraine-like transgressions” across his entire foreign policy.

According to a news release from the publisher, “Bolton covers an array of topics chaos in the White House, sure, but also assessments of major players, the president’s inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike, from China, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.”

“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, according to the publisher.

On Monday, Trump told reporters that Bolton will have a “very strong criminal problem” if he publishes the memoir.

The book was supposed to be released in March but its release date was twice delayed. The book is now scheduled to be published later this month.

In a statement Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union said the lawsuit is “doomed to fail”.

Ben Wizner, the director of the organization’s speech, technology and privacy project, said the supreme court had rejected a half-century ago the Nixon administration’s efforts to block the release of the Pentagon Papers, and said it is well-established that prior restraints on publication are unconstitutional.

“As usual, the government’s threats have nothing to do with safeguarding national security, and everything to do with avoiding scandal and embarrassment,” Wizner said.