WASHINGTON -- Former national security adviser John Bolton can go forward with the publication of his book, a federal judge ruled Saturday, rejecting the administration's request for an order to pull the book back.
The judge said it was too late for such an order to succeed.
"With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe -- many in newsrooms -- the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo," wrote Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
But in a 10-page opinion, Lamberth also suggested that Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance, as the Justice Department has separately requested -- and that he could be prosecuted for allowing the book to be published before receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete.
"Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States," Lamberth wrote.
"He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil [and potentially criminal] liability. But these facts do not control the motion before the court. The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm."
The main elements of the book -- The Room Where It Happened, Bolton's account of President Donald Trump's conduct in office -- have already been widely reported.
Trump has accused Bolton of lying -- and false information is not classified. But he has also made clear that he wants the Justice Department to prosecute his former adviser for spilling secrets, a position he reiterated on Saturday.
The president wrote on Twitter that Bolton "broke the law by releasing Classified Information [in massive amounts]. He must pay a very big price for this, as others have before him. This should never happen again!!!"
Bolton won the first round when the Justice Department was denied in its request for an order that he try to prevent further dissemination of his book. The department had also claimed that such an order could bind his publisher, Simon & Schuster, and bookstores that already have copies. The book goes on sale this week.
In a statement, Charles J. Cooper, a lawyer for Bolton, praised Lamberth's decision but took exception to the judge's suggestion that his client had violated his agreement or published classified information.
Lamberth issued the ruling after holding a public hearing Friday about the government's request.
The judge had signaled that he believed the Justice Department's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction had come too late to ensure that any classified information in the book would remain secret.
Later Friday, he held a closed hearing with government lawyers to discuss their contention that classified information remains in the manuscript -- including an exceptionally restricted kind that could reveal closely held intelligence sources and methods -- even though the National Security Council's top official for prepublication review had told Bolton that she was satisfied with the edits he had made at her request.
After her review was complete, the White House never sent a final approval letter to Bolton, who told Simon & Schuster to publish anyway.
But the White House, without telling Bolton, opened a second review by a National Security Council official, Michael T. Ellis, who claimed to have found at least six examples of classified information in the manuscript.
Other national security officials have said in declarations to the court that they think classified information is in the book.
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Lamberth will also oversee the part of the lawsuit that seeks to seize Bolton's proceeds for writing the book as a penalty for purportedly breaching the agreements he signed as a condition of receiving classified information to go through the prepublication review process. Cooper has argued that Bolton lived up to them.
The judge wrote that after viewing classified declarations and discussing them in the closed hearing, he was "persuaded that defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations."
Lamberth wrote that if Bolton was dissatisfied with the delay, he could have sued the government instead of unilaterally publishing.
He said Bolton had gambled and lost.
"This was Bolton's bet: If he is right and the book does not contain classified information, he keeps the upside mentioned above; but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security," he wrote. "Bolton was wrong."