The White House has informed former national security adviser John Bolton that his book manuscript appeared to contain “significant amounts of classified information” and could not be published in its current form.
The letter from the White House National Security Council to Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, and seen by Reuters, said the manuscript contained some material that was considered “TOP SECRET” that could reasonably be expected to cause “exceptionally grave harm” to U.S. national security if disclosed without authorization.
“Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” the letter said.
The letter, which was sent via email to Cooper, was dated Jan. 23.
The manuscript has upended the impeachment trial against Republican President Trump, for whom Bolton worked.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that Trump told Bolton in August he wanted to continue to freeze $391 million in security aid to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and his son, Hunter.
That revelation has bolstered Democrats’ push to call Bolton as a witness in the impeachment trial, in which Trump is accused of abusing his power over his dealings with Ukraine and of obstructing Congress.
The letter, signed by Ellen Knight, the senior director for records, access and information security management, said Bolton’s manuscript was still being studied.
“The manuscript remains under review in order for us to do our best to assist your client by identifying the classified information within the manuscript,” it said. “We will do our best to work with you to ensure your client’s ability to tell his story in a manner that protects U.S. national security.”
Bolton also reported in his book that Trump was effectively granting personal favors to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.
People familiar with the unpublished manuscript said Bolton wrote that he had shared his concern with Attorney General William Barr and that Barr responded by pointing to Trump’s intervention in two cases linked to Turkey and China: the investigation of Halkbank and Trump’s decision in 2018 to lift sanctions on ZTE, a major Chinese telecommunications company.
The Justice Department has disputed Bolton’s account.
“What I know about his intervention in the Halkbank case is highly abnormal and quite worrying, actually,” said Philip Zelikow, a history professor at the University of Virginia who served on the National Security Council staff for President George Bush.
Suggesting that Trump was putting private, commercial interests above those of the United States, Zelikow added: “There have been interventions on behalf of a foreign government that are hard to explain in traditional public interest terms.”