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29 January 2020•Update: 30 January 2020
WASHINGTON
The White House sent a formal letter to former National Security Adviser John Bolton amid furor about his upcoming book, warning parts with classified information may not be published, media reports said Wednesday.
In the Jan. 23 letter to Bolton's lawyer, Director for Access Management at the National Security Council Ellen Knight said, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, "appears to contain significant amounts of classified information."
"Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information," Knight wrote.
The letter comes hours after U.S. President Donald Trump rebuked Bolton on Twitter on Wednesday, saying the still-unreleased book that includes details on the president's dealings with Ukraine was "nasty" and "untrue."
Bolton wrote that Trump told him in August he wanted to keep aid to Ukraine frozen until it helped in probes into former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading Democrat seeking his party's nomination in November's presidential polls.
In a lengthy tweet, Trump said Bolton begged him for a non-Senate job and was fired because he was a super hawk.
"For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying 'Don’t do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?" said Trump.
Bolton said Jan. 6 that he is "prepared to testify" in the Senate if he is issued a subpoena to testify during Trump’s impeachment trial.
Trump has denied Bolton's claims, saying on Twitter that his former top official made them "only to sell a book."
Trump is facing two separate articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives in December, tied to his repeated attempts to get Ukraine to declare criminal investigations into Biden and his subsequent decision to refuse to cooperate in the congressional probe into the matter.
The first article, abuse of power, is centered on Trump's decision to hold up millions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine as well as a coveted Oval Office meeting sought by President Volodymyr Zelensky while he was pushing to have the probes declared. The second article, obstruction of Congress, is tied to his refusal to cooperate with the congressional investigation and his directive that top officials and government agencies do the same.
A vote on whether the Senate will call witnesses is expected Friday.
