The White House says the book has classified information, but John Bolton’s lawyers say the move is censorship.
A US judge has warned that it could be too late to stop the publication of a book about the Trump administration written by the president’s former national security adviser.
More than 200,000 copies of John Bolton’s book – The Room Where It Happened – have been printed and distributed and its contents have been the subject of numerous press reports.
But the US Department of Justice has gone to court to prevent the publication of the book and to retrieve copies already in circulation.
US district judge Royce Lamberth told the department’s lawyers that “the horse seems to be out of the barn”, wondering what he could do to pull back books already sent out “all over the country”.
The book includes claims that Donald Trump had been unaware that Britain was a nuclear power, that the president had asked if Finland was part of Russia, and that he had sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win November’s presidential election in the US.
Mr Bolton was fired by Mr Trump in September after 17 months in the White House job and Mr Trump told Fox News earlier this week that his former adviser “broke the law” in publishing the book.
