John Bolton moved to dismiss the Justice Department’s complaint against him late Thursday night as the government battles him to block the sale of the former national security adviser’s book.
Bolton, the former Trump national security adviser and United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush, filed a 175-page combined motion to dismiss the complaint against him and in opposition to Justice Department’s emergency application for a temporary restraining order to block the sale of his book, The Room Where It Happened, arguing that the government’s actions were an “attack” on his First Amendment rights.
“Defendant John R. Bolton moves to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim,” Bolton’s attorney Charles Cooper said. “If the First Amendment stands for anything, it is that the Government does not have the power to clasp its hand over the mouth of a citizen attempting to speak on a matter of great public import.”
The Trump administration took emergency action on Wednesday to try and block the release of Bolton’s book after excerpts leaked across the media landscape. The application that the Justice Department filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia resulted in Judge Royce Lamberth scheduling a hearing on Friday related to their effort “seeking to enjoin publication of a book containing classified information.”
Bolton’s lawyers argued that the Justice Department “at the behest of the White House, asks this Court to issue a prior restraint order suppressing the speech” of Bolton “for the transparent purpose of preventing Ambassador Bolton from revealing embarrassing facts about the President’s conduct in office.” The former U.N. ambassador argued that “it is difficult to conceive of speech that is closer to the core of the First Amendment than speech concerning presidential actions in office, including actions at the heart of the President’s impeachment, and it is difficult to conceive of a greater attack on the First Amendment than the suppression of that speech in the service of a reelection campaign.”
The Justice Department first filed a motion on Tuesday to block Bolton from receiving any of the proceeds from the sale of the book. There have been multiple reports that the Justice Department may be considering criminal charges against Bolton for allegedly disseminating classified information.
The Justice Department argued Bolton’s manuscript “still contains classified information” and said this could be confirmed by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina, and Michael Ellis, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs.
Bolton countered by arguing he “has decades of experience properly dealing with classified information” and that he “diligently and conscientiously attempted to avoid including anything in the book that would reveal classified information.” He argued that “out of an abundance of caution,” he submitted the book’s manuscript to the National Security Council for a prepublication security review and that “after four waves” of review by the National Security Council’s Ellen Knight, she told him in late April that “that’s the last edit I really have to provide for you.” Bolton lawyers claimed that “at that moment, Ambassador Bolton fulfilled any obligation he had under the express terms of his non-disclosure agreement with the Government.”
Yet, Bolton claims that Trump “and those acting at his direction” have “sought to delay publication of the book until after the election” in November.
“When it became obvious that the prepublication review process had been abused in an effort to suppress Ambassador Bolton’s speech, Ambassador Bolton and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, set the book for release (after two postponements of the release date to accommodate the prepublication review) on June 23, 2020,” Bolton’s lawyers said. “While the Government seeks to dispute Ms. Knight’s considered judgment, its claim is, quite simply, a regrettable pretext designed to cover up what is in fact a determined political effort to suppress Ambassador Bolton’s speech.”
Bolton and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, forged ahead with sending copies of the book to warehouses across the country, and many excerpts of the book were reported by the media on Wednesday.
“Tonight’s filing by the government is a frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility. Hundreds of thousands of copies of John Bolton’s THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED have already been distributed around the country and the world. The injunction as requested by the government would accomplish nothing,” the publisher said in a statement Wednesday.
Bolton wrote in one section of his book that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping last year to assist him with his reelection effort. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who claims to have been present at that discussion, told lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday that Bolton’s claims were “absolutely untrue.” The Trump national security adviser also wrote about what he called the “Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories” that led up to Trump’s impeachment.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Bolton is a “liar,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called him “a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people.”
Bolton, who left the White House last September after a year and a half in the Trump administration, was originally wanted to publish his highly anticipated book in early 2020, but numerous rounds of pre-publication review for classified information by the National Security Council pushed the book’s sale date back.
Bolton offered to testify in Trump’s Ukraine-related impeachment trial earlier this year only if the Republican-led Senate issued a subpoena against him, which the upper chamber declined to do. The Democrat-led House had asked Bolton to testify, but after he refused, he declined to issue a subpoena to compel his testimony through the courts.
The House impeached Trump on allegations of abuse of power related to Ukraine and of obstruction of Congress in December, but the Senate acquitted him following an impeachment trial in February.
