Judge: Ex-Trump advisor John Bolton can publish tell-all book despite efforts to block it

The decision is a victory for ex-Trump advisor John Bolton in a case that involved core First Amendment and national security concerns

Associated Press

Jun 20, 2020

In this Sept. 30, 2019, file photo, former national security adviser John Bolton gestures while speakings at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Saturday that former national security adviser John Bolton can move forward in publishing his tell-all book despite efforts by the Trump administration to block the release because of concerns that classified information could be exposed.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is a victory for Bolton in a court case that involved core First Amendment and national security concerns. But the judge also made clear his concerns that Bolton had “gambled with the national security of the United States” by opting out of a prepublication review process meant to prevent government officials from spilling classified secrets in memoirs they publish.

The ruling clears the path for a broader election-year readership and distribution of a memoir, due out Tuesday, that paints an unflattering portrait of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decision-making during the turbulent year-and-a-half that Bolton spent in the White House.

Nonethless, Lamberth frowned upon the way Bolton went about publishing the book. Bolton took it “upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities” and perhaps caused irreparable harm to national security, Lamberth said.

But with 200,000 copies already distributed to booksellers across the country, attempting to block its release would be futile, the judge wrote.

“A single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop,” Lamberth wrote. “With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo.”

Trump fired Bolton, who previously served under the George W. Bush and Ronald Regan administrations, in September saying that the two “disagreed strongly” on many issues.

In the book, titled “The Room Where It Happened,” Bolton said that Trump asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping amidst a trade war between the two economic powers to help his reelection prospects by purchasing more Ameican farm products.

Bolton called Trump’s effort to shift the June 2019 conversation to the U.S. election a stunning move, and wrote that it was among innumerable conversations that “formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency.”