A District Court judge in Washington, D.C. has denied an injunction attempt by the Trump administration to stop former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book from being sold in bookstores from June 23. In a ruling handed down Saturday morning, Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote that Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, has already been widely distributed to news media for excerpt and 200,000 copies have been shipped across the country. The judge wrote, “given the widespread dissemination of the books, the ‘horse is already out of the barn’.”
The judge did not, however, side with Bolton’s claims that he did nothing wrong in publishing his scorching memoir. “Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability,” Lamberth wrote. “But these facts do not control the motion before the Court. The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm. Its motion is accordingly DENIED.”
Trump called it a “BIG COURT WIN against Bolton,” writing on Twitter that the judge couldn’t have done much to stop the book’s release but still made “strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION.” He said Bolton will have a “really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!”
Read it at The Washington Post
