President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton will publish his long-awaited memoir later this month over objections of the White House, Bolton’s publisher said Friday.
Simon & Schuster announced that Bolton’s book, “In the Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” would be released on June 23. The book will offer an insider account of the events that occurred in the West Wing surrounding Ukraine that led to Trump’s impeachment last year.
The announcement of the publishing date comes after the White House said earlier this month that it had yet to sign off on the book’s publication over claims that it contains classified information.
Simon & Schuster said Friday that Bolton worked “in cooperation” with the National Security Council to incorporate changes. “The final, published version of this book reflects those changes, and Simon & Schuster is fully supportive of Ambassador Bolton’s First Amendment right to tell the story of his time in the Trump White House,” the publisher said.
Bolton writes that he found every decision Trump made was centered on his reelection, Simon & Schuster said, and that Bolton thought House Democrats “committed impeachment malpractice” by focusing only on Ukraine – not additional foreign policy decisions where “Ukraine-like transgressions existed.”
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes, according to Simon & Schuster.
Bolton’s memoir comes after he didn’t testify as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry or the Senate’s impeachment trial. Bolton was Trump’s national security adviser during Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when Trump urged Zelensky to investigate Trump’s 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Bolton was also present during the effort inside and outside the administration to push Ukraine to investigate Biden while a White House meeting and US security aid was withheld.
Bolton said last year he did not want to be part of whatever “drug deal” then-US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and then-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were cooking up on Ukraine, former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill told House impeachment investigators last year.
But Bolton resisted testifying himself before the House Intelligence Committee, which led the House’s impeachment investigation that led to Trump’s impeachment on two counts of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted Trump on both charges.
Bolton’s former deputy, Charles Kupperman, filed a lawsuit after he was subpoenaed last year. Kupperman and Bolton shared an attorney, and House Democrats say that a similar lawsuit would have been filed had they issued a subpoena for Bolton.
Bolton then offered to testify during the Senate impeachment trial, but the Senate voted against calling any witnesses before moving to acquit the President.
CNN previously reported that Bolton’s team has prepared for the possibility that the administration may try to retroactively classify some of the material in his book – a measure that is uncommon, but not unheard of, due to loopholes in an executive order dealing with classified information.
The President, vice president and some agency heads designated by the President, have broad authority over classifying or declassifying information.
