A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the Justice Department’s lawsuit against John Bolton alleging that he breached his obligations and improperly disclosed classified information in his new book is allowed to move forward, rejecting the former White House national security adviser’s efforts to dismiss the case.
“As a condition of becoming National Security Advisor to President Trump, John Bolton signed three nondisclosure agreements with the United States. Those agreements guard classified information, including classified information about intelligence sources and methods known as sensitive compartmented information,” Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in a 27-page opinion.
“Because the agreements imposed both obligations and because the government plausibly pleads that Bolton breached those obligations, the Court will deny Bolton’s pending motion to dismiss,” the Ronald Reagan appointee added.
“We are pleased with the ruling,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told the Washington Examiner.
Charles Cooper, Bolton’s lawyer, told the Washington Examiner the “court’s decision, which we are still studying, means that the case will now move forward to the phase in which the parties will develop and present their evidence to the court.”
The Justice Department argued this summer that Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, “still contains classified information” and said this could be confirmed by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina, and Michael Ellis, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs.
Cooper told the judge in September that Bolton’s “forthcoming, if necessary, affirmative defense” would include “that any contractual duties he owed relating to the prepublication review of his book were excused and released because the unprecedented second prepublication review of the book” by Ellis “was conducted unfairly and in bad faith, constituting a prior material breach by the Government.”
Ellen Knight, the former senior director for records access and information security management at the National Security Council who was heavily involved in the pre-publication review process for Bolton’s book, released an 18-page letter through attorney Kenneth Wainstein last month. That letter indicated she was “very concerned about the politicization, even the perceived politicization, of the prepublication review process.” Knight’s lawyer said that she is “specifically concerned that the government is positioning the litigation in a way that will prevent disclosure of information that might be at odds with the narrative it has propounded.”
Last month, the Justice Department reportedly opened a criminal inquiry into whether Bolton unlawfully disclosed classified information in his latest book. A grand jury convened and issued subpoenas for communication records from Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, and his literary agency, Javelin.
Bolton, who worked as national security adviser for Trump in 2018 and 2019 and as United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush, argued in court in June through his legal team that “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.”
Prior to its June release, which painted an unflattering picture of Trump, the Trump administration sought to stop the release of Bolton’s book through the courts, but the legal effort was denied by Lamberth, who noted that thousands of books had already been shipped nationwide.
“This was Bolton’s bet: If he is right and the book does not contain classified information, he keeps the upside mentioned above; but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security,” the judge said this summer. “Bolton was wrong.”
In the memoir, Bolton claimed Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if China could help his reelection campaign, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who claims to have been present at that discussion, told lawmakers Bolton’s claims were “absolutely untrue.”
Bolton also claimed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once wrote denigrating notes about Trump to Bolton, including that talks with North Korea had a “zero probability of success” and that Trump was “full of shit.” The Trump national security adviser also wrote about what he called the “Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories” that led up to Trump’s impeachment. Bolton’s book also seemed to cast doubt on a key element of a controversial Atlantic article about Trump and the military.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Bolton is a “liar,” and Pompeo called him “a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people.”
Bolton offered to testify in Trump’s Ukraine-related impeachment trial this year only if the Republican-led Senate issued a subpoena against him, which the upper chamber declined to do. The Democratic-led House had asked Bolton to testify, but after he refused, the House declined to issue a subpoena to compel his testimony.
