President Trump on Monday told reporters that if former National Security Adviser John Bolton's new memoir, The Room Where It Happened, is released on June 23 as scheduled, "he's broken the law" and "would have criminal problems. I hope so."
Publishing the book is "highly inappropriate," Trump continued, as he considers "every conversation with me as president to be highly classified." Bolton, he added, is "known not to tell the truth, a lot."
ABC News reported earlier Monday that the Trump administration is expected to soon file a lawsuit in federal court seeking an injunction to block the tell-all from being released. Last week, a person familiar with the book told Axios it will contain allegations that Trump committed "misconduct with other countries" beyond Ukraine.
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Bolton was known to take copious notes during meetings, and he held onto all of those legal pads when he left the White House. Attorney General William Barr has accused him of not fully working with the Trump administration to make sure no classified information is revealed in the book, but Bolton's attorney pushed back, writing in The Wall Street Journal last week that he did spend four months reviewing the memoir with officials, and they are trying to block the release by claiming it contains confidential material.
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