The court case over whether the federal government can take Bolton’s proceeds with respect to the book will continue.
Bolton maintains that he did not intend to disclose classified information and believes that the Trump administration classified information about the president after the book went through almost all the necessary approval steps. The book approval official Bolton worked with backed his retelling of the process and said through her attorney that Trump allies wanted to protect the president.
Judge Royce Lamberth of the DC District Court on Thursday ruled that the collection of evidence in Bolton would be strongly controlled in his court. He will first be able to get evidence from junior government officials and must get the judge’s approval before proceeding.
“Bolton can only discover that he is claiming that President Trump or senior White House officials have acted too badly by deliberately postponing the review of the pre-publication and by trying to unduly influence classification decisions,” Lamberth wrote.
The Bolton book – a major damaging moment for Trump politically during an election year – is one of the episodes that has also drawn significant criticism over the politicization of the Trump administration from the intelligence community and the Department of Justice.
Former Attorney General William Barr has signed a motion in the White House to sue to stop the publication of Bolton’s book, an extraordinary move days before its release.
According to the person familiar with the handling of the case, Barr, according to his practical approach outside his political circle, sent current Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to discuss with the department’s attorneys. Advocates advised that the attempt to stop Bolton’s book publication was bad. Their person’s concerns were ignored and Barr signed the lawsuit, the person said. The part of the case, which wanted to stop the publication, failed because the book was already in the hands of the booksellers.