Trump threatens ex-NSA John Bolton with legal action if he publishes bombshell memoir with 'classified' details
President Donald Trump on Monday, June 15, fired fresh salvo at his former national security adviser (NSA) John Bolton saying the latter could face criminal prosecution over the contents of his forthcoming tell-all publication about working with him. He said that "every conversation" he had with Bolton is "highly classified", suggesting his no-compromise stand on any kind of information leakage. Bolton, known to be ultra-hawkish, served as the NSA between April 2018 and September 2019 when he resigned over several differences with the president.
Speaking to reporters on June 15, Trump said: "I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified... So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out he's broken the law. I would think he would have criminal problems."
The issue made headlines after ABC News announced the same day that Bolton sat for an exclusive interview with Martha Raddatz that will be aired on June 21, two days before his White House memoir, 'The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir', is released. ABC News also cited informed sources to report that the Trump administration is likely to file a lawsuit in the federal court to stall the release of the book in its current form. Bolton's publication is set to reveal a number of "Ukraine-like transgressions" that Trump committed, according to publisher Simon and Schuster. It also said in a press release that Bolton was "astonished" to see Trump was only bothered about getting re-elected, even if that meant putting the country in danger.
Bolton's book has not been cleared by White House
Attorney General Bill Barr said the goal was to get the former NSA to finalize the National Security Council (NSC) review process. "The thing that is front-and-center right now is trying to get him to complete the process, go through the process and make the necessary deletions of classified information," he said. Bolton’s book has already been delayed because of back-and-forth with the council over whether it contained classified information. In an op-ed that came out in The Wall Street Journal last week, 71-year-old Bolton's attorney Chuck Cooper said the procedure was anything but standard. "What followed was perhaps the most extensive and intensive prepublication review in NSC history," he said.
Bolton's publisher said in a press release last week that he has already worked to address the NSC's concerns and the "final published version of this book reflects those changes". Cooper also documented the rounds of edits that the former NSA made along with Ellen Knight, the council's senior director for pre-publication review of materials penned by the body’s personnel. In late April, she told Bolton "that’s the last edit I really have to provide for you" but the White House refused to clear the book. Cooper said Bolton did not hear from Knight after May 7, a Daily Mail report said.
On June 8, John Eisenburg, Trump’s deputy counsel for national security, reached out to Bolton to say the manuscript contained classified information and publishing the book would mean Bolton’s non-disclosure agreement had been violated. "This last-minute allegation came after an intensive four-month review, after weeks of silence from the White House, and — as Mr Eisenberg admits in the letter — after press reports alerted the White House that Mr Bolton's book would be published on June 23," Cooper said.
"This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public importance. This attempt will not succeed, and Mr Bolton's book will be published June 23," he added. Barr also said that he didn’t believe that Bolton went through the process and hence violated the agreement. According to Trump, that constitutes a "criminal liability". "By the way, you're talking about, you're not talking about like he's going to return $3 that he's made on the book," the 74-year-old president said. He even recalled the Hillary Clinton email issue and said, "You know Hillary Clinton, she deleted 33,000 emails. And if we ever found out what those emails said, she'd have a liability. That's what you have, you have a liability."
Bolton’s book is set to reveal more about Trump’s telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 last year, which led to a massive controversy and eventually saw Trump getting impeached by the House. It will also tell why Trump did not testify during the impeachment hearings last year. Trump was accused of not releasing military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Zelensky to probe Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his son Hunter.