President Trump on Saturday touted a judge’s ruling on former national security adviser John Bolton’s memoir that allowed the book to proceed with publishing but panned its author as possibly threatening the nation.
“BIG COURT WIN against Bolton. Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it…BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made,” Trump tweeted.
“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!” Trump added.
The tweets praise U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, who ruled that he could not grant an injunction on the book’s publishing since Bolton and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, had already started distributing the book.
However, Lamberth criticized Bolton for pushing ahead with the book’s publication without receiving written official notice concluding that his manuscript was clear of sensitive or classified information.
“In taking it upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities, Bolton may indeed have caused the country irreparable harm,” Lamberth wrote. “But in the Internet age, even a handful of copies in circulation could irrevocably destroy confidentiality. A single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop. With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe—many in newsrooms—the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo.”
Bolton’s legal team claimed victory after the ruling but said it disagreed that the former Trump administration official put the country at risk.
“We welcome today’s decision by the Court denying the Government’s attempt to suppress Ambassador Bolton’s book,” Charles Cooper, Bolton’s attorney, said in a statement. “We respectfully take issue, however, with the Court’s preliminary conclusion at this early stage of the case that Ambassador Bolton did not comply fully with his contractual prepublication obligation to the Government, and 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.”
Bolton’s book, which he denies contains classified information, includes numerous scathing accounts of Trump’s interactions with foreign leaders.
Among Bolton’s most notable claims are that Trump solicited help from Chinese President Xi Jinping in winning reelection by urging him to buy more agricultural products to boost support among farmers in the U.S. Bolton also wrote that Trump dismissed human rights abuses in China against Uighur Muslims, that the president mused about jailing members of the press and that the commander in chief said invading Venezuela would be “cool.”