On Wednesday, the Department of Justice dropped its civil lawsuit charges against former President Donald Trump‘s national security advisor John Bolton.
Prosecutors sued Bolton alleging that many passages in his 2020 memoir The Room Where It Happened contained classified information that could put America’s national security at risk.
In a June 2020 court filing, DOJ attorneys wrote: “The NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels.”
Bolton and his attorney, Charles Cooper, insist that Bolton did not mishandle any classified information in his book.
“We are very pleased that the Department of Justice has dismissed with prejudice its civil lawsuit against Ambassador Bolton and has terminated grand jury proceedings,” Cooper said. “We argued from the outset that neither action was justifiable, because they were initiated only as a result of President Trump’s politically motivated order to prevent publication of the Ambassador’s book before the 2020 election.”
Despite objections from White House officials, Bolton went on to publish his book, disregarding the claim that he had violated nondisclosure agreements. He considered the entire attempt to block his book as largely a political move on behalf of the Trump Administration that was afraid of what Bolton had to reveal to the public about what went on behind closed doors.
