Trump sues to block Bolton book
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@Copper said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
Why bother?
Is there even one person in the entire country who hasn't made up their mind how they will vote this year?
There isn't really much need to worry about it.
"What difference at this point does it make?"
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
I think Bolton is pretty dreadful, I was very glad that Trump fired him.
Whether he's releasing classified information is unknown at this point. He says no, POTUS says yes. I see no particular reason to believe either of them. Two blokes with monumental egos.
One of them is telling the truth, because it is an either/or issue. There isnt a third possibility. And since the president is the one who decides if it's classified or not, not Bolton, and since Trump says it IS classified, then it's classified.
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I think it's up to the courts to decide who is telling the truth, not Donald Trump. Because if it was up to Donald Trump to decide, clearly he would never do anything other than tell the absolute truth. Except, of course, where he completely contradicted himself. Not that he would ever do that.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
I think it's up to the courts to decide who is telling the truth, not Donald Trump.
But how would that work? Courts would not have the knowledge they'd need to determine that. Only the spook agencies can do that, surely? And even if the courts were in the know, any hearing or trial would have to be away from the public.
I don't see that happening.
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Well, if he's suing to prevent the book being published, who is going to make the call?
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
Well, if he's suing to prevent the book being published, who is going to make the call?
On a quick search, all I find is: "On Tuesday, the Trump administration asked a federal judge to block publication of John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, the former national security adviser’s twice-delayed kiss-and-tell memoir of life in the Trump White House."
What criterion the judge would need to make his decision, I don't know.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
I think it's up to the courts to decide who is telling the truth, not Donald Trump. Because if it was up to Donald Trump to decide, clearly he would never do anything other than tell the absolute truth. Except, of course, where he completely contradicted himself. Not that he would ever do that.
You bring an apple into the room and put it on the table. You tell everyone in the room it's your apple and not to take it. Everyone in the room sees you bring the apple, and hears you say don't take it. I take your apple. You ask for it back, and I say no.
Do we need to go to court to decide which one of us owns the apple?
It's Trumps apple.
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https://theconversation.com/what-is-classified-information-and-who-gets-to-decide-77832
I would have to agree that things said in cabinet level meetings would by the standard in this article be at the very least 'for official use only' which his book is clearly not.
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Doesn't this all depend on what Bolton actually has to say?
Classified info:
We were considering planning country X with Y force on such and such date.
Probably not classified info:
We were considering a foreign military operation. Such and such orange person thought the only thing to consider would be some factor. He didn't even take into account blah, blah, blah. My principles were this, other other person's were that.
You can relay a story about a confidential matter, without saying what the confidential matter was. Now this all can get grey pretty fast, but you get my point.
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I mean - you don't even have to say orange man.
You can use real names, as long as you don't mention specific classified information.
Makes the book less interesting - but you can still make other points.
Also - I thought there is a government office set up to check for this exact situation.
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Before Bolton ever attended his first meeting, he signed a contract acknowledging that he understood that EVERYTHING said in these meeting was classified, and under penalty of law agreed to not speak about ANYTHING said in those meetings. This wasn't something new to him, he had signed these contracts before. Every other person who sat in those meetings signed the exact same contract. All of them knew long before they signed it that this was routine. Bolton had signed them before when he was working with previous administrations. Every president in our lifetimes has required this, it's not something new that Trump thought up. The law makes it clear that if a president says something is classified, it is classified. End of story. You or no one else gets to come along after the fact and start se one guessing what parts of the meeting is and is not classified. There are no grey areas for you to navel gaze.
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I should say, and I realise I wasn't clear in my original post, I don't approve of Bolton writing the book. I didn't agree with Peter Wright writing his book, either. Both of them were disgruntled former employees who felt that they'd been badly treated. They may both be right, or they might not, but these are basically kiss and tell books written by people that no sane person wants to have sex with.
I hypocritically read Spycatcher when my brother brought it back from Australia, and it was actually fascinating stuff. I won't bother with Bolton's.
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@xenon said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
Doesn't this all depend on what Bolton actually has to say?
Classified info:
We were considering planning country X with Y force on such and such date.
Probably not classified info:
We were considering a foreign military operation. Such and such orange person thought the only thing to consider would be some factor. He didn't even take into account blah, blah, blah. My principles were this, other other person's were that.
You can relay a story about a confidential matter, without saying what the confidential matter was. Now this all can get grey pretty fast, but you get my point.
No. Confidential means confidential.
The enemy would love to have any and all little bits of information. Even the fact that Bolton talked to the president is important if you are trying to learn about an enemy.
The only time anything should be released is when you want to feed the enemy misleading information. And occasionally you give him some good secret stuff so he can't easily learn how to tell what is good and what is bad.
We used to tell who was important in Moscow by the location of officials during the May Day parade. And the Russians would shuffle people in the pictures to mislead us.
Mr. Bolton should only be publishing anything even close to secret because we want the enemy to have the information. Not because it makes a juicy book.
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Meh - outside of military preparations and secrets, - I don’t see why everything needs to be classified.
This is not a Trump-specific opinion.
Is the opinion that everything the President says should be classifieds unless it’s a public statement or in front of a camera?
The government should be more transparent by design.
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@xenon said in Trump sues to block Bolton book:
Meh - outside of military preparations and secrets, - I don’t see why everything needs to be classified.
Everything does not need to be classified.
Problem solved.
The government should be more transparent by design.
Mr. Trump may be the most transparent person in the world. He may be the most transparent person since Jesus Christ.
It is unlikely that anyone could be more transparent than Mr. Trump. And that is likely not by design.
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We all know now Bolton’s true character. He makes money and gets his revenge through a tell all. Putting the merits of the book aside I would never associate with an individual of that character. My personal opinion is that it is one of the worst traits an individual can have.
