Bolton asks court to dismiss DOJ suit, citing failure to state a claim

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton asked a federal court to dismiss the Justice Department’s (DOJ) effort to block the publication of his memoir Thursday evening.

In the Thursday night motion, lawyers for the former Trump official asked the court to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim, calling the DOJ effort a “regrettable pretext designed to cover up what is in fact a determined political effort to suppress Ambassador Bolton’s speech.”

In an accompanying filing, BOLTON says effort to stop him from publishing is a “regrettable pretext designed to cover up what is in fact a determined political effort to suppress Ambassador Bolton’s speech.”

And it’s too late. pic.twitter.com/oj3Oa2ocPq

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 18, 2020

The Trump administration filed an emergency application Wednesday asking for a restraining order to block publication of the book, “The Room Where it Happened,” currently set to be released on June 23.

The White House has insisted Bolton’s White House memoir contains classified information.

“To be clear: Defendant’s manuscript still contains classified information, as confirmed by some of the Government’s most senior national-security and intelligence officials,” the DOJ said in its memorandum supporting their argument.

“Disclosure of the manuscript will damage the national security of the United States.”

“The type of classified information in these passages is the type of information that foreign adversaries of the United States seek to obtain, at great cost, through covert intelligence,” Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote in a signed declaration accompanying the application.

Bolton’s book, a copy of which has been obtained by The Hill, contains numerous explosive allegations concerning Trump, including that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help to win reelection and that he sought to intervene in criminal investigations of companies with ties to Turkey and China to curry favor with their respective leaders.