WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that his former national security adviser, John Bolton, could face a “criminal problem” if he doesn’t halt plans to publish a new book that describes scattershot, sometimes dangerous, decision-making by a president focused only on getting re-elected.
Trump said it would be up to Attorney General William Barr to issue any charges, but hinted that the matter would end up in court. “We’ll see what happens. They’re in court — or they’ll soon be in court,” Trump said about the book, set to be released early next week.
The president accused Bolton of not completing a pre-publication review to make sure the book does not contain classified material. That contradicts statements from Bolton’s attorney, Chuck Cooper, who says his client worked painstakingly for months with classification specialists at the White House National Security Council to make changes to avoid releasing classified material.
During an event at the White House, Barr said administration officials who have access to sensitive information typically sign non-disclosure agreements that require them to go through a clearance process before they can publish something based on information they accessed in the job.
“We don’t believe that Bolton went through that process — hasn’t completed the process — and, therefore, is in violation of that agreement,” Barr said. The Trump administration is “trying to get them to complete the process — go through the process — and make the necessary deletions of classified information,” Barr said.
Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” was supposed to be released in March. Its release date was twice delayed and it is now set to be released next week.
“Bolton covers an array of topics — chaos in the White House, sure, but also assessments of major players, the president’s inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike, from China, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany,” according to the publisher.
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, according to a news release from the publisher.
