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TOPLINE
An attorney for former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton accused the White House of using national security as a pretext to censor Bolton’s forthcoming tell-all book about the Trump administration, “The Room Where It Happened,” which he says the White House reviewed thoroughly with Bolton, who even accepted the “vast majority” of their suggested edits.
DURHAM, NC – FEBRUARY 17: Former National Security Advisor John Bolton leaves the stage after … [+]
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KEY FACTS
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, attorney Chuck Cooper detailed a lengthy collaboration with a National Security Council staffer to vet the book, which chronicles Bolton’s experiences in the tumultuous White House, and which Cooper says will be released on June 23 as planned.
Cooper says that Bolton “took care as he wrote to avoid revealing anything that might be classified,” and instructed him to send the book to NSC senior director Ellen Knight for prepublication review.
“What followed was perhaps the most extensive and intensive prepublication review in NSC history,” Cooper asserts. “Mr. Bolton and Ms. Knight spent almost four months going through the nearly 500-page manuscript four times, often line by line.”
Cooper claims that after accepting “the vast majority of Ms. Knight’s suggestions and proposing alternative solutions to others,” Bolton was told the exhaustive editing process was complete but never received a clearance letter.
Instead, Deputy White House Counsel John A. Eisenberg informed Cooper earlier this week that the book still “contains classified information and that publishing the book would violate his nondisclosure agreements.”
Cooper pointed to reports that Trump had weighed in on the process, calling Bolton ”a traitor,” and saying the White House would try to block the book despite regulations preventing officials from classifying information “to prevent embarrassment to a person.”
Key Background
A former Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, Bolton served as Trump’s national security advisor from March 2018 to September 2019, when he was ousted by Trump, reportedly due to his hawkish foreign policy views. Bolton’s name emerged again during Trump’s impeachment trial, when he said he would be willing to testify about whether Trump pressured the President of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden as someone with direct knowledge of the events. Bolton later hinted that answers to many of the questions left unanswered by the trial would be available in his book.
Key Quote
“This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public import,” Cooper concluded.
Tangent
Trump has been intensifying his efforts to quash embarrassing information ahead of the election. Just this week, his campaign sent a letter to CNN demanding they retract a poll showing Biden up by 14 points and apologize.
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