Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2020 7:14:16 GMT
Seven days before the scheduled June 23 release of a tell-all account of John Bolton's tenure as President Trump's national security adviser, the Justice Department late Tuesday mounted a last-ditch effort to block its publication.
A 27-page civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against Bolton with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that publication of his 592-page book, The Room Where It Happened, would be a violation of nondisclosure agreements he signed and compromise national security.
"[The National Security Council] has determined that the manuscript in its present form contains certain passages—some up to several paragraphs in length—that contain classified national security information," the filing states. "In fact, the NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels."
"Accordingly," it continues, "the publication and release of The Room Where it Happened would cause irreparable harm, because the disclosure of instances of classified information in the manuscript reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage, to the national security of the United States."
The lawsuit argues that Bolton, who lasted 16 months as Trump's third national security adviser before being fired in September 2019, had signed a document three days after leaving his White House post acknowledging "that he continued to be 'prohibited from disclosing any classified or confidential information,' and that he 'may not use or disclose nonpublic information'—defined as 'information gained by reason of [his] federal employment' and that 'has not been made available to the general public.' "
Bolton is accused in the lawsuit with three counts of breach of contract and fiduciary duty — for allegedly violating pre-publication review requirements, for violating his duty not to disseminate classified information, and for unjust enrichment from what the Justice Department says is a book deal "allegedly worth about $2 million."
The court is asked to order Bolton to request that the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, further delay a publication date that originally was to have been in April so that the NSC can complete its pre-publication review. No time frame is given for how soon that review might be finished.
According to a director with Bolton's Foundation for American Security and Freedom super PAC, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday evening had no comment to make about the lawsuit.
In an email, his attorney, Charles Cooper, said, "We are reviewing the Government's complaint, and will respond in due course."
The Room Where It Happened
A White House Memoir
By John Bolton
About The Book
As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.
The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.
He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”
The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
A 27-page civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against Bolton with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that publication of his 592-page book, The Room Where It Happened, would be a violation of nondisclosure agreements he signed and compromise national security.
"[The National Security Council] has determined that the manuscript in its present form contains certain passages—some up to several paragraphs in length—that contain classified national security information," the filing states. "In fact, the NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels."
"Accordingly," it continues, "the publication and release of The Room Where it Happened would cause irreparable harm, because the disclosure of instances of classified information in the manuscript reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage, to the national security of the United States."
The lawsuit argues that Bolton, who lasted 16 months as Trump's third national security adviser before being fired in September 2019, had signed a document three days after leaving his White House post acknowledging "that he continued to be 'prohibited from disclosing any classified or confidential information,' and that he 'may not use or disclose nonpublic information'—defined as 'information gained by reason of [his] federal employment' and that 'has not been made available to the general public.' "
Bolton is accused in the lawsuit with three counts of breach of contract and fiduciary duty — for allegedly violating pre-publication review requirements, for violating his duty not to disseminate classified information, and for unjust enrichment from what the Justice Department says is a book deal "allegedly worth about $2 million."
The court is asked to order Bolton to request that the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, further delay a publication date that originally was to have been in April so that the NSC can complete its pre-publication review. No time frame is given for how soon that review might be finished.
According to a director with Bolton's Foundation for American Security and Freedom super PAC, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday evening had no comment to make about the lawsuit.
In an email, his attorney, Charles Cooper, said, "We are reviewing the Government's complaint, and will respond in due course."
The Room Where It Happened
A White House Memoir
By John Bolton
About The Book
As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.
The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.
He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”
The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.