WHITE HOUSE
Trump predicts a court battle over John Bolton's
book
Attorney General William Barr instead focused on a
pre-publication process that he said the former national security adviser had
yet to clear.
By CAITLIN
OPRYSKO
06/15/2020
05:59 PM EDT
President
Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr did not deny on Monday that the
administration would sue to block the impending release of John Bolton’s
memoir, with Barr insisting that the former national security adviser had yet
to finish the required pre-publication clearance process.
Following a
roundtable at the White House on senior citizens issues, Trump told reporters
that if the administration had not already taken legal action, “they will soon
be in court.”
The
potential legal threat, first reported by ABC News, comes just a week before
Bolton’s tell-all about his time in the West Wing is set to be released. Bolton
has been sparring with the White House since late January over accusations that
the impending memoir contains classified information.
But Barr on
Monday made no explicit mention of a lawsuit to block the book, repeatedly
telling reporters that in the administration’s view, Bolton “hasn't completed
the process” of getting his book cleared for publication.
Asked what
the Department of Justice was doing about Bolton’s book, Barr said that there
are “a number of things, but the thing that is front and center right now is
trying to get him to complete the process — go through the process and to make
the necessary deletions of classified information.”
When a
reporter asked whether the department was going to court to block Bolton’s
book, Barr responded that “I said what we are doing is trying to get him to
complete the clearance process that is required.”
In an op-ed
in the Wall Street Journal last week, Bolton’s attorney Chuck Cooper detailed
what he described as an “intensive four-month review” by the National Security
Council, but said that the White House had gone silent for six weeks until news
reports announced the book’s release date. Cooper accused the administration of
using “national security as a pretext to censor” the former national security
adviser.
Bolton’s
publisher, Simon & Schuster, has also backed him up in recent days, saying
in a news release on Wednesday that Bolton had cooperated with the NSC to
incorporate changes in the text to address its concerns. “The final, published
version of this book reflects those changes,” the company said.
Asked about
those claims, Barr reiterated that Bolton had yet to complete the pre-clearance
process.
At the
White House on Monday, Trump blasted his former national security adviser,
describing the decision to pen a memoir as “totally inappropriate” while
suggesting that he hired Bolton to head the NSC because it was a post that did
not require Senate confirmation.
Trump then
went on to claim that Bolton should not have been allowed to write a book based
on his time at the White House, arguing that “I will consider every
conversation with me as president highly classified” — a blanket assertion that
is legally dubious.
In the
book, according to a news release put out on Friday, Bolton rips his former
boss and accuses Trump of repeatedly endangering national security — and
committing a series of potentially impeachable offenses — to boost his
reelection prospects. Bolton will also knock House Democrats for too narrowly
tailoring their impeachment inquiry last fall, arguing that he could provide
evidence of similar transgressions “across the full range of his foreign
policy.”
When a
manuscript of the memoir leaked in January, it landed like a bombshell on the
Senate impeachment trial, where Trump was ultimately acquitted. But more
potential revelations sparked fears that the normally straightforward NSC
clearance process could turn into a politicized and protracted legal battle
that, thus far, has failed to materialize.
According
to ABC News, the NSC told Bolton his manuscript still contained “significant
amounts” of classified information, a claim Cooper rejected.
Trump said
Monday he hadn’t read the manuscript but said that Bolton had been “advised not
to write it until it’s cleared. He couldn’t wait.”
“But
personally I would imagine he’s got like, when you do classified, that to me is
a very strong criminal problem. And he knows he’s got classified information,”
the president continued, again asserting that “any conversation with me is
classified” and adding without evidence that he understood Bolton might have
lied about conversations “in some cases.”
“We’ll see
what happens,” he said.
Bolton, in
the meantime, is already set to embark on a media tour to promote the book,
with his first interview about the memoir airing Sunday night on ABC.
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