司法部周三撤销了针对前者的民事诉讼国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿他的出版物2020年回忆录《发生的房间》，阻止了特朗普政府试图没收博尔顿从该书获得的所有收益的努力。
周三提交的这份简短的文件仅称，“双方约定带着偏见驳回该诉讼。”
博尔顿的律师查尔斯·库珀(Charles Cooper)在一份声明中表示:“我们非常高兴司法部带着偏见驳回了对博尔顿大使的民事诉讼，并终止了大陪审团的诉讼。”“我们从一开始就认为，这两项行动都是不合理的，因为它们只是特朗普总统出于政治动机下令阻止在2020年选举前出版大使的书的结果。”
库珀在声明中补充说，对博尔顿是否通过出版这本书非法处理机密信息的单独刑事调查也已撤销。去年秋天，大陪审团向博尔顿的出版商和他的文学代理人发出传票，要求他们与博尔顿沟通。
chip somodeilla/Getty Images，FILE
白宫国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿在白宫外接受记者采访
前总统唐纳德·特朗普曾公开为他的司法部去年夏天的失败努力欢呼阻止出版物博尔顿的书，其中包括白宫私人会议和特朗普与外国领导人互动的详细描述。
起诉博尔顿的检察官声称，书中的多个段落包含高度机密的信息，将对国家安全造成不可挽回的损害。
DOJ的律师在2020年6月的一份法庭文件中说:“国家安全委员会已经确定手稿中的信息属于机密、秘密和绝密级别。”。
博尔顿一直坚称他没有发表任何机密材料。
“因此，我们认为不需要出版前审查，”库珀在该书出版前于2019年写给特朗普政府国家安全委员会。"出于谨慎，我们还是提交了这份手稿。"博尔顿的团队和国家安全委员会的律师对回忆录的内容进行了长达几个月的来回审查。
负责此案的联邦法官罗伊斯·兰伯特(Royce Lamberth)随后发布了一项裁决，似乎给博尔顿带来了麻烦，此前官员们在私下向兰伯特介绍了该书的具体段落，他们说这些段落包括机密信息。
“这是波顿的赌注:如果他是对的，而且这本书不包含机密信息，他就保持乐观...但如果他错了，他将失去从图书交易中获得的利润，承担刑事责任，并危及国家安全。博尔顿是错的，”兰伯特说。
博尔顿去年夏天不顾白宫的反对，决定出版这本书，此前他表示，按照特朗普总统的要求行事的官员已经将出版前的审查过程政治化。针对他的民事诉讼指控博尔顿违反了他被任命为国家安全顾问时签署的保密协议，但博尔顿的律师推断，如果干预出版前审查的特朗普官员没有诚信行事，他没有义务遵守这些协议。
DOJ drops civil lawsuit against former Trump national security adviser John Bolton
The Justice Department on Wednesday dropped its civil lawsuit targeting formernational securityadviserJohn Boltonover the publication of his2020 memoir"The Room Where It Happened," halting an effort brought during the Trump administration that had sought to seize all proceeds Bolton received from the book.
The short filing, made Wednesday, only stated that "the parties stipulate to dismissal of this action, with prejudice."
"We are very pleased that the Department of Justice has dismissed with prejudice its civil lawsuit against Ambassador Bolton and has terminated grand jury proceedings," Charles Cooper, an attorney for Bolton, said in a statement. "We argued from the outset that neither action was justifiable, because they were initiated only as a result of President Trump's politically motivated order to prevent publication of the Ambassador's book before the 2020 election."
A separate criminal probe into whether Bolton illegally mishandled classified information by publishing the book has also been dropped, Cooper added in his statement. Last fall, grand jury subpoenas were sent to Bolton's publisher and his literary agent demanding their communications with Bolton.
Former PresidentDonald Trumphad publicly cheered on his Justice Department's failed effort last summer toblock the publicationof Bolton's book, which includes detailed accounts of private White House meetings and Trump's interactions with foreign leaders.
Prosecutors suing Bolton alleged that multiple passages in the book included highly classified information that would cause irreparable harm to national security.
"The NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret and Top Secret levels," DOJ attorneys said in a June 2020 court filing.
Bolton has long maintained that he did not publish any classified material.
"We accordingly do not believe that prepublication review is required," Cooper wrote to the Trump administration National Security Council in 2019, ahead of the book's publication. "We are nonetheless submitting this manuscript out of an abundance of caution." Bolton's team and lawyers from the NSC went through a months-long back-and-forth review process of the memoir's contents.
A federal judge overseeing the case, Royce Lamberth, subsequently issued a ruling that seemed to spell trouble for Bolton, after officials briefed Lamberth in a private setting on specific passages of the book that they said included classified information.
"This was Bolton's bet: If he is right and the book does not contain classified information, he keeps the upside ... but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security. Bolton was wrong," Lamberth said.
Bolton moved to publish the book last summer over the objections of the White House after he said the pre-publication review process had been politicized by officials acting at President Trump's behest. The civil suit against him accused Bolton of violating nondisclosure agreements he had signed upon his appointment as national security adviser, but attorneys for Bolton reasoned that he had no obligation to honor those agreements if Trump officials who intervened in the pre-publication review weren't acting in good faith.
