#White House wants John Bolton’s book delayed over national security concerns

The White House wants to stall publication of ousted national security adviser John Bolton’s book, asserting that it still contains classified information and could pose a security threat despite changes Bolton made in the manuscript.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Bolton told friends he believed he had made sufficient changes to address national security concerns, and that the Trump administration was using the claim of classified information to keep the book from the public eye as the November election nears.

John Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel, told Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper of the administration’s concerns that the book still contained classified information after learning that “The Room Where It Happened” was scheduled to be published on June 23 as planned.

“The current draft manuscript still contains classified material,” Eisenberg wrote in a letter to 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,” he wrote.

Eisenberg said the National Security Council would give Bolton a redacted copy of the manuscript by June 19.

Cooper said Wednesday he got the letter and was preparing a reply, but he declined to comment further, and Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who had served in a variety of high-level government positions, also declined to comment, the Times reported.

A spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, said it was originally scheduled for release on March 17, and had already been shipped to warehouses.

Bolton was national security adviser from April 2018 until he resigned last September after repeated clashes with Trump over policy, including Trump’s attempts to forge a relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and policy regarding Iran.

The paper reported that in an initial draft of the book, Bolton wrote how the president told him in August that he wanted to continue freezing security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with probes into Democrats, including Joe Biden.

That controversy led to Trump’s impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House, though he was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.

Senate Republicans rejected Democratic efforts to subpoena Bolton to testify during the trial.