Judge: Bolton can publish Trump tell-all book despite White House concerns
Judge: Bolton took it 'upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval'
WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Saturday that former national security adviser John Bolton can move forward in publishing his tell-all book despite efforts by the Trump administration to block the release because of concerns that classified information could be exposed.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is a victory for Bolton in a court case that involved core First Amendment and national security concerns. But the judge also made clear his concerns that Bolton had “gambled with the national security of the United States” by opting out of a prepublication review process meant to prevent government officials from spilling classified secrets in memoirs they publish.
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The ruling clears the path for a broader election-year readership and distribution of a memoir, due out Tuesday, that paints an unflattering portrait of President Donald Trump's foreign policy decision-making during the turbulent year-and-a-half that Bolton spent in the White House.
Former national security adviser John Bolton takes part in a discussion on global leadership at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
Nonetheless, Lamberth frowned upon the way Bolton went about getting his story to print. Bolton took it “upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities” and perhaps caused irreparable harm to national security, Lamberth said.
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But with 200,000 copies already distributed to booksellers across the country, attempting to block its release would be futile, the judge wrote.
“A single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop,” Lamberth wrote. “With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo.'
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If Bolton made an enemy in the White House with his tome, he made no friends among Democrats, whom he criticized in the book for failing to examine Trump's conduct more broadly during impeachment hearings earlier this year.
The party's lawmakers, meanwhile, have lambasted him for refusing to testify and instead identifying his concerns in a book for which he reportedly received a $2 million advance.
The judge's ruling nonetheless represents a triumph for the free press, said Bolton's publisher, Simon & Schuster.
"We are grateful that the court has vindicated the strong First Amendment protections against censorship and prior restraint of publication," a spokesman said. "We are very pleased that the public will now have the opportunity to read Ambassador Bolton’s account of his time as National Security Advisor."
Trump, for his part, also characterized the ruling as a win, noting the judge's skewering of Bolton's conduct.
"Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay," the president wrote on Twitter. "Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected judge could have done about stopping it."