The Department of Justice has sued former national security adviser John Bolton in a bid to halt the release of his forthcoming book, the Washington Post reports.
Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, is currently slated for publication by Simon and Schuster next Tuesday. The publisher says the book “shows a president addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government.”
The suit seeks to force Bolton “to instruct or request his publisher, insofar as he has the authority to do so, to further delay the release date,” according to the Post. The suit also seeks a judicial order requiring Bolton to “take any and all available steps to retrieve and dispose of any copies of The Room Where it Happened that may be in the possession of any third party in a manner acceptable to the United States.”
A Simon and Schuster spokesperson said the lawsuit is “nothing more than the latest in a long-running series of efforts by the administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president,” the New York Times reports.
The lawsuit comes a day after Trump suggested that he would seek legal action against Bolton, saying that his former national security adviser would have “criminal problems” if he went ahead with plans to publish the book.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
