A federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s request to block John Bolton’s book from being released, but nevertheless warned the former national security adviser likely risked U.S. national security by disclosing classified information.
In a 10-page decision, Judge Royce Lamberth of the D.C. District Court wrote that the Justice Department’s arguments against releasing the book were not enough to overcome the fact that the book’s details were already publicly available. Lamberth also said the memoir could be distributed via the internet, even if he ruled that it could not be published.
Multiple news outlets already have reported on leaked content from the book.
“For reasons that hardly need to be stated, the Court will not order a nationwide seizure and destruction of a political memoir,” Lamberth wrote.
The judge also chastised Bolton for pushing forward with the book publication process despite not having the green light from the Trump administration about its contents.
“He opted out of the review process before its conclusion. Unilateral fast-tracking carried the benefit of publicity and sales, and the cost of substantial risk exposure. 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 wrote. “Bolton was wrong.”
Trump quickly responded to the judge’s ruling on Twitter, noting that “strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made.” The president said that “Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay,” adding Bolton “likes dropping bombs on people and killing them” and that “now he will have bombs dropped on him!”
Lamberth said, “While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy.” The judge pointed to his own comments at Friday’s hearing, in which he remarked that the “horse is already out of the barn.” And he wrote on Saturday that “by the looks of it, the horse is not just out of the barn — it is out of the country” because “with hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done.”
Excerpts from Bolton’s upcoming book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, were leaked and widely reported by the media on Wednesday. In the memoir, he 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 at a hearing Wednesday that Bolton’s claims were “absolutely untrue.” Bolton also wrote that Trump once said journalists should be jailed or executed.
Bolton also claimed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once wrote denigrating notes about Trump to Bolton. In his memoir, he said Pompeo wrote that talks with Kim on North Korea had a “zero probability of success” and said 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.
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 him too. Bolton, who worked for Trump in 2018 and 2019, filed a motion to dismiss the complaint against him on Thursday, arguing that the government’s actions were an “attack” on his First Amendment rights and that the pre-publication review process had been politicized to keep the book off the shelves until after the election. Both sides clashed in court on Friday.
Lamberth ruled that “upon reviewing the classified materials, the Court is persuaded that Defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.”
The judge said that Bolton “disputes that his book contains any such classified information and emphasizes his months-long compliance with the prepublication review process” but criticized him because he “could have sued the government and sought relief in court.” Lamberth said that Bolton “was entrusted with countless national secrets and privy to countless sensitive dealings” and “to Bolton, this is a selling point.”
Lamberth quipped that many people in the United States can’t get a passport renewed in four months, yet Bolton wanted a 500-page book containing classified information published that quickly. The judge said that “what is reasonable to the Court was intolerable to Bolton, and he proceeded to publication without so much as an email notifying the government.”
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 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.
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.
