The Justice Department has abandoned its pursuit of John Bolton, President Trump‘s national security adviser, dropping an investigation into his book that officials said revealed classified information and ending a law suit.
It marks a victory for Bolton who accused Trump of using the Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr for political purposes.
Although the Biden administration has backed several Trump-era legal positions designed to protect the White House, on Wednesday it filed court documents ending a year-long legal battle to suppress the book.
And Bolton’s lawyer said prosecutors had also dropped a grand jury investigation.
‘These actions represent a complete vindication for Ambassador Bolton, and a repudiation of former President Trump’s attempt, under the pretext of protecting classified information, first to suppress the book’s publication and when that failed in court, to penalize the ambassador,’ said Bolton spokeswoman Sarah Tinsley.
John Bolton was President Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, an experience he turned into a memoir, entitled The Room Where it Happened, published last year. Trump officials claimed the book was not properly screened for classified material before publication and launched an investigation
The book was published in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections and generated a string of headlines that painted Trump and his foreign policy process in an unflattering light
The Trump administration sued last year to block the release of Bolton’s book, ‘The Room Where It Happened.’
It was still published in the lead-up to the 2020 president election delivering a deeply unflattering account of Trump and his foreign policy.
For example, it described how Trump asked Chinese premier Xi Jinping for help in his reelection and how the president pressured his Ukraine counterpart for politically charged investigations.
Trump repeatedly abused his former foreign policy lieutenant.
‘John Bolton, one of the dumbest people I’ve met in government and sadly, I’ve met plenty, states often that I respected, and even trusted, Vladimir Putin of Russia more than those in our intelligence agencies,’ he wrote on Twitter in August last year, shortly after the books release.
A month later he told Fox News: ‘I will say this, John Bolton was a very stupid person. If I listened to John Bolton, we’d be in World War 5 right now.’
‘What he did I think was highly illegal, I mean his book is loaded up with confidential and classified information.’
President Trump furiously attacked Bolton last year for a memoir that painted him and his foreign policy in unflattering light. ‘I will say this, John Bolton was a very stupid person. If I listened to John Bolton, we’d be in World War 5 right now,’ he said.
In their complaint last year, lawyers for the Department of Justice said Bolton had breached conditions of employment.
‘Simply put, defendant struck a bargain with the United States as a condition of his employment in one of the most sensitive and important national security positions in the United States government and now wants to renege on that bargain by unilaterally deciding that the prepublication review process is complete and deciding for himself whether classified information should be made public,’ it said.
But Bolton’s lawyers insisted he proceed with the book only after working with a National Security Council official for months to ensure it no longer contained classified material.
That official, Ellen Knight, described in a letter submitted to the court last September how Trump administration officials repeatedly exerted political pressure in an unsuccessful effort to block the book’s release.
She described an unusual process of delay tactics and legal maneuverings.
Department’s efforts to halt the book’s release, partly because hundreds of thousands of copies had already been distributed. But the judge expressed concern that Bolton published the book before receiving a formal clearance letter, which Knight said was blocked by the White House.
Besides suing Bolton, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation over the book, though that inquiry has now been dropped, said Bolton’s representatives. A department spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday.
Bolton’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, described the government’s efforts to block the book as part of a ‘politically motivated order’ by Trump.
‘By ending these proceedings without in any way penalizing Ambassador Bolton or limiting his proceeds from the book, the Department of Justice has tacitly acknowledged that President Trump and his White House officials acted illegitimately,’ Cooper said in a statement.
The book generated substantial attention even before its publication after news broke during Trump’s first impeachment trial that Bolton had written how Trump had linked the supply of military assistance to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Trump’s Democratic rival, now-President Joe Biden.
Those allegations were at the heart of an impeachment trial that ended with Trump’s Senate
in February 2020. Bolton though refused to testify at impeachment proceedings.
Bolton’s time at the Trump White House was unsurprisingly rocky. A noted national security hawk, Bolton was an odd choice for Trump, who advocated ending the United States’ overseas military operations. The two continued to clash in public comments long after Bolton left office.