#Kellyanne Conway says John Bolton’s book threatens national security

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday asserted that “the nation’s security” would be at risk if former national security adviser John Bolton’s White House tell-all were published as is.

“I would just think that it’s very important to the nation’s security, not even the President himself, but for the presidency itself and the nation’s security to make sure the review processes have been completed,” she told reporters outside the White House.

She repeated Attorney General William Barr’s claim that it was unprecedented that a book about Trump would be published while he was still in office — even though ex-staffers including spokesman Sean Spicer, acting AG Matthew Whitaker, political aide Omarosa Manigault Newman and communications aide Cliff Sims all published memoirs while the president remained in office.

“It’s kind of remarkable to have a book be published while people are still in office,” she said about Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened.”

The book’s publisher says it paints an unflattering portrait of the president, and Trump’s Justice Department wants to keep under wraps, filing a lawsuit Tuesday to block publication.

She then sarcastically mocked reporters for their concerns over Bolton’s book, given past criticism of the far right hawk over his hardline foreign policy stances.

“It is actually precious and adorable, how pro-John Bolton you all are now. It’s really cute,” she said.

And she challenged them to be sure to fact check the book.

“I know that you’re all for fact checking so I hope you’ll apply that to all types of work,” Conway said.

Justice filed a federal lawsuit against Bolton to try to block the publication and sale of his new memoir, arguing the former national security adviser’s book includes classified information that cannot be released to the public.

“This is a civil action by the United States to prevent Defendant John R. Bolton, a former National Security Advisor, from compromising national security by publishing a book containing classified information — in clear breach of agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of gaining access to highly classified information and in clear breach of the trust placed within him by the United States Government,” read the beginning of the 27-page court filing with the US District Court in DC.

Bolton left the White House last September after clashing with the president over his policies regarding Ukraine, North Korea and Iran, among others.

He had hoped to publish “The Room Where It Happened,” in early 2020.

But it underwent numerous and ongoing reviews for classified information by the National Security Council, and the date was pushed back to June 23.

“This is the book Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read. There hasn’t been a detailed, inside account on how this president makes decisions on a day-to-day basis, until now,” Simon & Schuster, the publisher, asserted last week.

“He argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy.”

Trump had said Monday that every conversation he has as president is classified and threatened criminal charges against Bolton.

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said the lawsuit was “nothing more than the latest in a long running series of efforts by the Administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the President,” and that Bolton had worked with the National Security Council to address concerns about classified information.

“Ambassador Bolton has worked in full cooperation with the NSC in its pre-publication review to address its concerns and Simon & Schuster fully supports his First Amendment right to tell the story of his time in the White House to the American public,” said Adam Rothberg, the spokesman.

Bolton on Tuesday retweeted a statement by the American Civil Liberties Union, which noted a similar effort 50 years ago by the Nixon administration to suppress “The Pentagon Papers” was rejected by the Supreme Court.

“Any Trump administration efforts to stop John Bolton’s book from being published are doomed to fail,” the ACLU stated.