June 18, 2020

The Trump administration will go to court on Friday in an effort to halt publication of John Bolton’s memoir of his time as national security adviser, on the grounds it contains classified material.

Justice department lawyers are likely to face an uphill struggle in Washington district court, as hundreds of thousands of copies of The Room Where It Happened, due for publication on Tuesday, have already been sent to booksellers, excerpts have appeared in the press, and Donald Trump had on Twitter denounced it as “a compilation of lies and made-up stories”, dismissing Bolton as a “wacko”.

Trump’s description of Bolton’s book as a work of fiction will make it hard for the government to prove the assertion in its court filing that the “disclosure of the manuscript will damage the national security of the United States.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/john-bolton-book-trump-interview-not-fit-for-office