US judge Royce Lamberth denies bid to block John Bolton’s book

US federal judge Royce Lamberth has rejected a Justice Department’s request to block John Bolton’s book given its wide dissemination.

Donald Trump and John Bolton in April 2018. Picture: AFP

A US federal judge said John Bolton likely “jeopardised national security” in rushing to publish a memoir that may contain classified information, but he rejected the Justice Department’s request to immediately block further dissemination of the book given many of its revelations have already been made public.

In a brief order on Saturday morning (Sunday AEST), federal district judge Royce Lamberth said he had reviewed the materials the Justice Department claimed contained classified information, which the government filed under seal, and was persuaded that Mr Bolton had violated his employment contracts that governed his access to classified information when he was Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

“This was Bolton’s bet: If he is right and the book does not contain classified information, he (gains publicity and sales); but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security,” Judge Lamberth said, adding: “Bolton was wrong.”

A lawyer for Mr Bolton, Charles Cooper, welcomed the decision “denying the government’s attempt to suppress” the book, but disputed the judge’s conclusion his client didn’t fulfil his employment obligations. “The case will now proceed to development of the full record on that issue. The full story of these events has yet to be told — but it will be,” he said.

In a series of tweets, Mr Trump applauded the judge’s decision and said: “Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!”

Mr Bolton’s 577-page book, The Room Where It Happened, recounts his 17-month tenure serving the Trump administration and says the President consistently put his re-election and his family’s wellbeing ahead of the national interest when he made decisions.

Mr Trump has dismissed the claims as the exaggerations of a disgruntled former employee. He has accused Mr Bolton of lying and of including classified information in the book.

The judge said while he found that Mr Bolton had improperly rushed to publish the book — which has been shipped around the world in advance of its Tuesday publication date, and its contents reported on by newspapers — he didn’t believe an injunction would have an impact at this stage.

“With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo,” the judge said.

At a Friday hearing on the government’s emergency request, Judge Lamberth questioned whether such an order would be practical, saying “the horse … seems to be out of the barn”.

The Justice Department sued Mr Bolton last week, arguing that even though the initial government reviewer had judged the manuscript to be free of classified information in April after a four-month review, other senior officials later determined that the current form of the manuscript still contained classified passages.

The Wall Street Journal