Trump’s
First Administration Tried to Stop Bolton’s Memoir
The book,
in which John Bolton described repeated instances of corruption, was one of the
most detailed and damaging accounts of Trump’s first term.
John
Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” described what he said were
repeated instances of corruption and “obstruction as a way of lif
Maggie
Haberman
By Maggie
Haberman
Aug. 22,
2025
The week
before John R. Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” was set to
be released, President Trump’s first administration filed a federal lawsuit
claiming the book was filled with classified information.
The suit
by the Trump administration claimed that Mr. Bolton did not wait for the
national security review of his manuscript, over which he worked closely with
government officials, before allowing his book to be sent to printers. But the
judge in the case sided with Mr. Bolton over the Trump administration’s efforts
to stop the book’s publication.
The book
went forward, and it was one of the most detailed and damaging accounts of Mr.
Trump’s first term. Mr. Bolton described what he labeled repeated instances of
corruption and “obstruction as a way of life.”
Later,
Ellen Knight, the career government official who led the review of the
manuscript, described a process she called deeply politicized. She wrote in a
letter to the court in connection with the administration’s lawsuit that she
had cleared the book for publication at the end of April 2020 after working
with Mr. Bolton, who had been Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, to remove
classified material.
But she
said White House political appointees overruled her, deciding that the book
still contained classified information. The book, according to one former
senior administration official familiar with what happened who was not
authorized to discuss the matter publicly, ultimately contained no classified
material, and the matter was settled.
In 2021,
months after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. came into office, the government
dropped the suit and the Justice Department closed a related criminal probe
about possible mishandling of classified material.
The civil
case was dropped “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be revived.
Still,
Mr. Trump made his view of Mr. Bolton’s conduct plain long before any legal
process played out.
In an
interview with Fox News in June 2020, Mr. Trump declared that Mr. Bolton
“released massive amounts of classified, and confidential, but classified
information. That’s illegal and you go to jail for that.”
He added
that it was “treasonous.”
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President
Trump.
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