President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton asked a judge to throw out a government lawsuit seeking to seize profits from the sale of his tell-all memoir on the grounds that it illegally spills classified information.
The Justice Department is ignoring "core constitutional principles" by seeking to punish the former top Trump administration official "for publishing speech that is embarrassing to the president," Bolton said in the filing late Thursday in federal court in Washington.
The government aims to seize Bolton's $2 million book advance as well as any royalties he receives. "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," which went on sale June 23 describes Bolton's interactions with Trump during his 17-month stint on the job, portraying the president as reckless, selfish and being more concerned with his reelection than with the nation.
Bolton said he fulfilled his obligations under two non-disclosure agreements by having the book cleared for publication by a senior career government official. The U.S. never gave Bolton the final written clearance he allegedly needed, but Bolton claims the government was dragging its feet to prevent the book from going out.
The book's publisher, Simon & Schuster Inc., this week released another damning memoir about Trump written by his niece, Mary Trump, after a failed court fight to stop it that was brought by the president's brother, Robert Trump. That book also condemns the president's behavior and policies. The White House has strongly and repeatedly denied the allegations in both books.
Bolton's filing quotes a U.S. Founding Father, James Madison, discussing freedom of speech and government restrictions on printing in 1800, arguing that punishing political speech after publication would have the same effect as trying to stop the presses. "It would seem a mockery to say, that no law should be passed, preventing publications from being made, but that laws might be passed for punishing them in case they should be made," Madison wrote.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth last month rejected the government's last-ditch attempt to block the publication on national security grounds. But Lamberth slammed Bolton for gambling with national security and going ahead with the book before getting final clearance.
"He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability," the judge wrote. "But these facts do not control the motion before the court. The government has failed."
