The New York Times confirms this morning what I’ve warned about for years: the government’s pre-publication review system (sanctified by the Supreme Court in US v Snepp) is being flagrantly corrupted to suppress merely politically embarrassing non-secrets.
Now we learn from the Times that John Bolton’s blocked manuscript (under “review” by White House censors) includes revelations about Trumpian efforts as early as May 2019 to orchestrate the Ukraine shakedown. This – on top of earlier leaked fragments of Bolton’s manuscript describing Trump’s admission to him that military aid was being withheld from Ukraine to extract political favors.
Never let the Justice Department tell me again that the screening of memoirs by current or former national security officials is merely for national security purposes. I urge Bolton’s lawyer, Charles Cooper, to object to the rank politicization of an already pernicious government censorship regime – and to use this to shame the administration into liberating Bolton’s manuscript.
If we needed further proof of the danger of ceding open-ended powers to this President, we’ve got it. Donald Trump is discovering that he can not only bend the truth to protect himself; he can officially censor it out of existence.