WASHINGTON — Hours before the Justice Department asked a judge to order President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton to halt publication of his memoir, senior department lawyers and the White House Counsel’s Office were still debating whether to take that step, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
While the extent of Attorney General William Barr’s personal involvement remains unclear, the aggressive move is the latest instance in which the Justice Department under his watch has appeared to wield its law enforcement power in ways that align with Trump’s views of perceived political allies or adversaries.
Barr overruled prosecutors to seek a more lenient sentence for Roger Stone, Trump’s friend and ally, for sabotaging a congressional investigation into Russia’s election interference, and decided to seek dismissal of the case against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
In the Bolton case, many legal experts said they were not surprised that the Justice Department filed the lawsuit, which in its initial form was focused on going after Bolton’s $2 million advance. If Bolton believed the White House was playing political games in delaying completion of the manuscript’s pre-publication review, the standard step would have been for him to sue — not unilaterally publish.
The next day, John A. Eisenberg, the National Security Council legal adviser, sent a letter claiming that the book still contained classified information after all, Cooper said. He declared that claim “a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public import” and said publication was moving forward.
“Once again what you’re seeing here is the administration — at the president’s urging, directly or indirectly — using their enormous law enforcement power to go after someone who the president doesn’t like and who is a critic,” Berwick said.
BARR SHOULD BE DISBARED
Bolton should be 'targeted' for not putting his book through the proper security review. So, what's the problem?
That's so unlike Barr.