John Bolton’s book on Trump White House delayed until June 23

An upcoming book by John Bolton, the former national security adviser to President Trump, has pushed back its release date again, this time to June 23.

Originally the book, “The Room Where It Happened” — which chronicles Bolton’s 500 days in the Trump White House and is expected to criticize the president’s actions on Ukraine — was slated for a March 17 release. But publisher Simon & Schuster in early March had pushed back the release to May 12 after running into objections from the feds on potential disclosure of national security matters.

It is not clear why the book’s release date was delayed again, but the new date was posted on Amazon on Wednesday. The book is listed as 576 pages long, which is about 50 pages longer than its original length.

A blurb on Amazon calls Bolton’s book “a substantive and factual account of his time in the room where it happened.”

Simon & Schuster — whose book deal with Bolton is worth a reported $2 million — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Interest in the book, and its anticipated criticism of Trump’s actions over Ukraine, peaked during the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year, when it reached the top 20 on Amazon’s bestseller list. On Wednesday night, it ranked No. 11,971.

Bolton reportedly describes an August conversation, a month before he left the White House on acrimonious terms, in which Trump told him he wanted to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid from Ukraine until it helped him with investigations into political rival Joe Biden.

Allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine led to his being impeached last December by the House of Representatives. In February, the Senate acquitted him.

Bolton’s lawyers have said they did not believe there was any danger of disclosing secret information, but the publisher agreed to roll back the release date anyway.

“Ambassador Bolton has carefully sought to avoid any discussion in the manuscript of sensitive compartmented information (‘SCI’) or other classified information, and we accordingly do not believe that prepublication review is required,” Bolton’s lawyer Chuck Cooper wrote in a December letter.

Bolton was not called to testify in the  House impeachment investigation of Trump. He said he would be willing to testify in a Senate trial if he was called to do so, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to call any witnesses.

With Post wires