[ad_1]
“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.”
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
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.
[ad_2]
Source link