President Donald Trump has warned that John Bolton will break the law if his book is published. He followed through on his threats. The US government launched legal action on Tuesday, June 16, to try to block the publication of the book by the former White House national security adviser, which should paint a very critical portrait of the Trump presidency.

The book, "The Room Where It Happened, A White House Memoir," is scheduled to be released on June 23, said Bolton's attorney Charles Cooper. 

The complaint, filed with a federal court, argues that the 71-year-old neoconservative did not have his text approved beforehand, and that his work is thus "clearly in violation of the agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and its access to highly classified information. "

A "pretext to censor Mr. Bolton"

In a recent column published in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Cooper writes that his client has made multiple rewrites at the request of the White House to ensure that classified information is not revealed. Charles Cooper adds that Mr. Bolton thought he had the approval of the White House in May but never received a letter confirming it.

On June 8, he said, a senior representative of the National Security Council replied in a letter that Bolton's manuscript "contains classified information and that publishing the book would violate his nondisclosure agreements".

"This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak out on matters of the utmost public importance. This attempt will not succeed not, "concludes Cooper.

The American president brutally dismissed on September 10 the one who was then one of his main advisers, against a backdrop of disagreements over the management of several sensitive files like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia.

With AFP and Reuters

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