According to the federal lawsuit, the forthcoming White House memoir compromises national security because it contains classified information which is "in clear breach of agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of gaining access to highly classified information."
"Within two months of his departure from government service, Defendant had negotiated a book deal allegedly worth about $2 million and had drafted a 500-plus page manuscript rife with classified information, which he proposed to release to the world," the lawsuit adds.
News of the lawsuit is no surprise.
Sources familiar with the matter told ABC on Monday that the Trump administration was planning to attempt to block the book's release, which is set for June 23. Last week, the White House said that Bolton's book contained classified information and that the National Security Council would give Bolton a redacted copy of his manuscript by June 19, according to the lawsuit.
Bolton, who was part of US President Donald Trump's administration between April 2018 and September 2019, was initially slated to publish "The Room Where It Happened" in early 2020. However, the book's sale date was pushed back due to several rounds of review by the National Security Council for classified information.
However, as evidenced by the lawsuit, the National Security Council and Bolton's representatives are still in conflict over whether the manuscript contains classified information, even after multiple rounds of review.
“This is the book Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read. There hasn’t been a detailed, inside account on how this president makes decisions on a day-to-day basis, until now,” Bolton's publisher, Simon & Schuster said last week, according to the Washington Examiner. “He argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy.”
