Former White House adviser John Bolton has been locked in a serious battle with the West Wing for weeks now, and it appears as though he’s simply grown tired of it.
Bolton has long been planning to release a book that details his time working in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, with the assumption being that the work will be of great detriment to the President’s reelection chances.
Perhaps that is why the White House has been dragging their fee in approving much of the book’s verbiage, much of which they believe is still classified information.
This week, Bolton and his team indicated that a lack of approval from the executive branch will not stop the book’s release.
His upcoming book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, was scheduled to be released in March of this year, but was postponed after the National Security Council refused to give it clearance.
At the time, the book’s publishers, Simon & Schuster, pushed the release back to 12 May and said that the “new date reflects the fact that the government review of the work is ongoing”.
The release was then delayed again at the end of April, to 23 June, which is when it is claimed the memoirs will be published, even if its publication does not receive White House approval.
The government had certainly put forth the appearance of progress.
Ellen Knight, a senior director of the National Security Council’s record office, wrote to Mr Bolton’s attorney earlier in the year, and said that his book “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information”.
Ms Knight wrote that the council wanted to work with him to “move forward as expeditiously as possible”, and added: “We will do our best to work with you to ensure your client’s ability to tell his story in a manner that protects US national security.”
One can only imagine the sort of stories the book will contain, and there is little doubt that the Democrats are slobbering over the possibility of Bolton’s book affecting the President’s electoral chances.
