The White House has told John R. Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, that his memoir of working for the president, scheduled for publication in less than two weeks, contains classified information and could present a security threat.
Mr. Bolton has told associates he believes he has made changes to the book that accommodate the national security concerns and that the White House is using the claims of classified information as a way of keeping it from the public.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly told advisers he wants to stop the publication of the book. He has wide latitude to determine what materials are classified.
John A. Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel, informed Charles Cooper, Mr. Bolton’s lawyer, of concerns the book still contained classified information after learning that “The Room Where It Happened” was scheduled to be released on June 23 as planned.
“The current draft manuscript still contains classified material,” Mr. Eisenberg wrote in a letter to Mr. Cooper.
“As we advised your client when he signed the nondisclosure agreements, and as he should be well aware as a former assistant to the president for national security affairs in this administration, the unauthorized disclosure of classified information could be exploited by a foreign power, thereby causing significant harm to the national security of the United States,” Mr. Eisenberg wrote.
Mr. Eisenberg said the National Security Council would provide Mr. Bolton with a redacted copy of the manuscript by June 19 — four days before the book’s publication date.
Mr. Cooper said Wednesday that he had received the letter and was preparing a response, but he declined to comment further. Mr. Bolton also declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster, the book’s publisher, said the book had already been shipped to warehouses. The book was originally scheduled for release on March 17.
Mr. Bolton, who served as national security adviser from April 2018 until he resigned under pressure last September, submitted his manuscript to the National Security Council earlier this year for a routine review of whether it contained classified information, and has met several times with a top official tasked with reviewing materials for publication.
In January, during that review, as the Senate was considering the two articles of impeachment brought against him by the House, The New York Times reported that in an initial draft of the book, Mr. Bolton recounted how the president told him in August that he wanted to continue freezing security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.
That issue was at the heart of the House’s charges against Mr. Trump but Mr. Bolton refused to cooperate with the House impeachment investigation, and Democratic lawmakers declined to subpoena his testimony because it could have led to a protracted court fight.
Mr. Bolton offered to testify in the Senate trial on the impeachment charges, but Republicans rejected his offer. Mr. Bolton’s critics have said that nothing has stopped him from speaking without a subpoena.
In an appearance at Duke University in North Carolina in February, Mr. Bolton said of his book, “This is an effort to write history and I did it the best I can. We’ll have to see what comes out of the censorship.”
“I’m hoping ultimately I can get the book published,” Mr. Bolton said during his talk at the school. “I hope it’s not suppressed.” He also questioned the fairness of Mr. Trump being able to tweet about the book while telling Mr. Bolton to make substantial revisions to the manuscript.
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White House Tells Bolton His Book Still Contains Classified Information - The New York Times
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