The United States Department of Justice yesterday filed a lawsuit in a bid prevent John Bolton, a one-time National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, from publishing a damning book about his time working in the White House.
To be titled: The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, and set for release on June 23rd, the case filed by the U.S. government claims the book contains “classified information”.
“I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified,” President Trump said to reporters on Monday. “So that would mean that if he (Bolton) wrote a book and if the book gets out, he’s broken the law and I would think he would have criminal problems.”
The book, and President Trump’s response have predictably drawn a massive response from the U.S. media with Mr Bolton’s lawyer, saying his client “will respond in due course”.
Pre-sales already have the book listed as number 1 on Amazon’s best seller list, and in the days until the publication hits the bookstores, pundits across the U.S. have been taking to the airwaves and Twitter offering opinions and insights.
A week ago both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal published details from the book.
The Washington post claimed that in June 2019, “President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects.”
The Wall Street Journal meanwhile quoted the book as saying “Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” and also had President Trump telling Xi, “You’re the greatest Chinese leader in 300 years!”
One more entertaining excerpt, albeit indicative of frequent claims on the president’s less than balanced mindset, had the U.S. leader obsessing with the song Rocket Man by Elton John – a signed CD of which he was bent on presenting to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un.
