Trump loses bid to block book by former national security adviser John Bolton
- The ruling clears the path for the publication on Tuesday of Bolton’s memoir, which paints an unflattering portrait of Donald Trump
- But the judge said Bolton’s decision to move ahead with publication without go-ahead from the government ‘raises grave national security concerns’
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney on politico.com on June 20, 2020.
US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said the Justice Department’s request to suppress the tell-all book on national security grounds would be impossible to enforce, but criticised Bolton’s decision to move ahead with publication without the explicit go-ahead from the government.
“While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy,” Lamberth wrote.
“The horse, as we used to say in Texas, seems to be out of the barn,” Lamberth said at the outset of Friday’s hearing. “It certainly seems difficult to me about what I could do about those books all over the country.”