Trump administration sues to stop release of book by former security adviser

WASHINGTON
(AP) — The Trump administration sued former national security adviser
John Bolton on Tuesday to delay the publication of a book that the White
House says contains classified information and that is expected to
paint an unfavorable portrait of the president’s foreign policy
decision-making.

The civil lawsuit in Washington’s federal court
follows warnings from President Donald Trump that Bolton could face a
“criminal problem” if he doesn’t halt plans to publish the book, which
is scheduled for release next week.

The complaint is the latest
salvo in a contentious relationship between Trump and the hawkish
Bolton, who was abruptly forced from the White House in January after
repeated disagreements on national security matters. It moves their rift
into court, where a judge will be asked to decide whether Bolton
short-circuited proper procedures to get his book on the market —
something his lawyer and publisher have strongly denied.

His
publisher, Simon & Schuster, called the lawsuit “nothing more than
the latest in a long running series of efforts by the administration to
quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president.” It
said in a statement Tuesday evening that Bolton had worked with White
House officials to address their concerns, and that it “fully supports
his First Amendment right” to tell his story.

Similarly, Bolton’s
attorney, Chuck Cooper, has said Bolton worked for months with
classification specialists to avoid releasing classified material. He
has accused the White House of using national security information as a
pretext to censor Bolton.

In its lawsuit, the Justice Department
administration contends that the former adviser did not complete a
pre-publication review to ensure that the manuscript did not contain
classified material. It requests that a federal court order Bolton to
“instruct or request” that his publisher further delay publication of
the book to allow for a completion of the national security review
process and to “retrieve and dispose” of existing copies in a manner
acceptable to the government.

The Justice Department also is
asking a federal court to grant it the rights to all proceeds Bolton
earns from the publication of the book.

In its lawsuit, the
Justice Department argues that Bolton’s job meant he “regularly came
into possession of some of the most sensitive classified information
that exists in the U.S. government.” Officials said Bolton’s manuscript
was more than 500 pages and was “rife with classified information, which
he proposed to release to the world.”

The book contained “significant quantities of classified information that it asked Defendant to remove,” the filing says.

“The
United States is not seeking to censor any legitimate aspect of
Defendant’s manuscript; it merely seeks an order requiring Defendant to
complete the prepublication review process and to take all steps
necessary to ensure that only a manuscript that has been officially
authorized through that process — and is thus free of classified
information — is disseminated publicly,” the lawsuit says.

Bolton’s
book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” was supposed
to be released in March. Its release date was twice delayed and it is
now set to be released next week by Simon & Schuster.

“Bolton
covers an array of topics — chaos in the White House, sure, but also
assessments of major players, the president’s inconsistent, scattershot
decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike,
from China, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran, the United Kingdom,
France, and Germany,” according to the publisher.

“I am
hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure
that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes in the
book, according to a news release from the publisher.

The book has
been highly anticipated for months, especially after news broke during
Trump’s impeachment trial that the manuscript offered a vivid account of
the president’s efforts to withhold military aid from Ukraine in
exchange for the country assisting with investigations into Trump’s
political rival Joe Biden. Those allegations formed the crux of the
impeachment case, which ended with the president’s Senate acquittal in
February.

Cooper did not immediately return an email seeking
comment on the lawsuit. He has previously said that he sent Bolton’s
manuscript to White House classification specialist Ellen Knight in late
December and that Knight and Bolton spent nearly four months going
through the nearly 500-page book multiple times, “often line by line.”

According
to the lawsuit, Knight completed her review in late April and
determined that the manuscript did not contain classified information.
But early the next month, Michael Ellis, a senior National Security
Council official, began an additional review of the manuscript and found
classified information in it, the lawsuit says. The review was still
ongoing earlier this month when media reports revealed that Bolton
intended to move forward with his book.

In a statement Tuesday,
the American Civil Liberties Union said the lawsuit is “doomed to fail.”
Ben Wizner, the director of the organization’s speech, technology and
privacy project, said the Supreme Court had rejected a half-century ago
the Nixon administration’s efforts to block the release of the Pentagon
Papers, and said it is well-established that prior restraints on
publication are unconstitutional.

“As usual, the government’s threats have nothing to do with safeguarding national security, and everything to do with avoiding scandal and embarrassment,” Wizner said.

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Zeke Miller and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.