White House seeks emergency order in last-ditch attempt to block explosive book following revealing extracts
Injunction attempt almost impossible as ‘thousands of copies’ of explosive book already shipped
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Your support makes all the difference.The Trump administration wants an emergency restraining order placed against John Bolton, as it makes one last bid to block the ex-national security adviser’s new tell-all book.
The US Justice Department submitted the emergency order late on Wednesday night as explosive excerpts were released from the 577-page book titled The Room Where it Happened.
Mr Bolton alleges that the US president solicited Chinese assistance with his 2020 re-election bid, and wrote: “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations”.
The emergency restraining order comes after another lawsuit submitted on Tuesday alleged that Mr Bolton’s book contained classified material about the president.
“He broke the law. Very simple ...This is highly classified information,” Mr Trump told Fox News Sean Hannity when asked about the book on Wednesday night.
The book’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, said In a statement that the White House would not succeed in its bid to block it’s publication on 23 June.
“Hundreds of thousands of copies of John Bolton’s ‘The Room Where It Happened’ have already been distributed around the country and the world,” said Simon and Schuster. “The injunction as requested by the government would accomplish nothing.’’
Mr Bolton, who served as Mr Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months, claims the US president pleaded with Chinese president Xi Jinping to provide assistance with his 2020 election campaign,
In one instance, according to Mr Bolton, the two world leaders were discussing hostility to China in the US when “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.
“He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
He added that Congress should have widened the scope of its impeachment inquiry to include these other incidents.
Mr Trump has condemned Mr Bolton over the book who he said on Wednesday night “was a washed up guy”.
He told Sean Hannity: “He broke the law — he was a washed up guy, I gave him a second chance ... he couldn’t get senate confirmed so I gave him a non senate confirmed position ... this is highly classified information & he did not have approval.”
The White House’s contention that so much of the book, which contains other alarming details about Mr Trump, was classified appeared to be a tacit admission that many of Mr Bolton’s allegations were accurate — as inaccurate information could not be classified.
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