WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday objected to the publication of a book by President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton depicting Trump as playing a central role in a pressure campaign on Ukraine, while members of the U.S. Senate asked a spree of questions in the impeachment trial.
A letter from the White House National Security Council to Bolton’s attorney said the manuscript, based on a preliminary review, appeared to contain “significant amounts of classified information.”
Some material was deemed top secret and could “cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security,” according to the letter dated Jan. 23 to Bolton’s lawyer. The letter surfaced with the Senate in the midst of a pitched battle over whether to remove Trump from office in part due to conduct described by Bolton in the manuscript.
Contradicting Trump’s version of events, Bolton wrote in the unpublished book manuscript that the president told him he wanted to freeze $391 million in security aid to Ukraine until Kiev pursued investigations into Democrats, including Biden and the former vice president’s son Hunter Biden, the New York Times reported.
“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agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” the letter said.
The manuscript was submitted to the White House for pre-publication review, a process that civil libertarians have said gives the government too much power to censor speech.
Democrats view Bolton as a figure who could help them solidify their case against the president. Reports about the book’s contents appear to boost their arguments in the trial.
Democrats want to call Bolton, a Republican foreign policy hawk, and a small number of other officials to testify. Trump’s fellow Republicans in the Senate have resisted the idea of having any witnesses.
The letter said the White House would be in touch with Bolton’s lawyer with “detailed guidance” for manuscript revisions.
Senators began the first of two planned days of posing questions to both Trump’s legal team and the Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives who have served as prosecutors in the trial on charges of abusing power and obstructing Congress arising from his request that Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden.
Democratic senators used their questions to try to undermine the defense presented by Trump’s legal team and make their case for witnesses including Bolton. Republicans used their questions to try to bolster the contention of Trump’s team that he did not commit an impeachable offense even if Bolton’s assertions are true.
