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“The horse, as we used to say in Texas, seems to be out of the barn,” Judge Royce Lamberth of the DC District Court, said during the hearing Friday, which is ongoing. “It certainly looks difficult to me about what I can do about those books all over the country.”

The court fight over Bolton’s book has turned the former national security adviser’s skirmish with President Donald Trump into a symbolic fight over freedom of speech and the press.

Lamberth also pressed the Justice Department on when and how the details in the book were classified by the Trump administration.

“Did the President instruct any intelligence officials to make portions of the book classified?” the judge asked Justice Department attorney David Morrell.

“I have not spoken to the President. I’m not aware of that,” Morrell said.

Morrell explained that there are three examples of passages in Bolton’s book that were classified by others in the administration after he went through several rounds of reviews with the National Security Council reviewer Ellen Knight.

Lamberth also grilled Bolton’s lawyer for how Bolton ended his review process and pushed his book to publication.

He “walked away” from the review process, Lamberth said, asking why Bolton hadn’t sued when the book’s review dragged on.

The judge has pointed out that Bolton didn’t wait for an official letter from the administration clearing him to publish.

This discussion in court could be key to the Justice Department’s claim that Bolton breached his employment contract, and should have to give up proceeds from the book.

Trump wants book stopped

The Trump administration wants to stop the book from being released publicly next Tuesday and to claw back Bolton’s earnings from its publication. The Justice Department has argued in court that Bolton didn’t receive formal approval to publish the book, in breach of his contract with the federal government, and that the book still contains classified details that could cause “grave” harm to American national security.
But Bolton has fired back that the White House arbitrarily dragged out the review as a way to protect Trump from embarrassment in an election year, and that it’s impossible to stop the book’s publication now.
On Wednesday, several major news organizations, including CNN, obtained copies of the book and published articles about Bolton’s revelations on Trump’s behavior, such as the President’s encouragement of foreign leaders to help him in the 2020 election.

Free speech groups and publishers — including the ACLU, Knight First Amendment Center, the Pan American Center, book publishers, Dow Jones & Co., The Washington Post and The New York Times — have condemned the Justice Department’s approach in the case and supported Bolton publishing the book, according to legal arguments the groups have filed over the past day.

They have warned that if the Trump administration were to block the book’s release, it would undermine decades of free speech precedent, including the landmark Supreme Court decision to allow newspapers to publish the classified material in the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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