Hours ago, a US federal judge has declined to block the publication of a tell-all book by John Bolton, Donald Trump’s third national security adviser, amid mounting tensions with the President.
The decision of Judge Royce C Lamberth came, while hundreds of thousands of copies of ‘The Room Where It Happened’ have already been shipped and excerpts have been published widely. The book remains due to be released on Tuesday.
But the judge did have harsh words for Bolton, who he said failed to complete a national security review and “likely published classified materials”. Bolton, the judge said, had “gambled with the national security of the United States” and “exposed … himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability”.
On his part, Trump tweeted that Bolton “must pay a very big price for this, as others have before him”. The president also praised the judge, contrived to claim “a big court win” and wrote of his former aide, a foreign policy hawk: “He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!”
According to the British Guardian, Trump has sought to crack down on national security leakers and repeatedly advocated jail sentences for reporters who use such material.
In an email to the Guardian, Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said Trump could now “continue to press the case to prevent Bolton from receiving proceeds from the book’s sale and to force him to disgorge the $2m advance the publisher offered, while the government could criminally prosecute Bolton for violating the [non-disclosure agreement] and jeopardising national security”.
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