Trump claims 'every' conversation is classified ahead of Bolton book – but experts say otherwise

'We'll see how spiteful Bolton can be' if courts threaten to take all profits from coming West Wing tell-all, Georgetown professor says

Donald Trump's renewed feud with a former national security adviser has again revealed his broad view of the powers of his office — a view legal experts say could quickly be rejected by federal courts.

The president on Monday warned John Bolton, his third top security aide who left the West Wing on contentious terms, he could face "criminal problems" if a book he wrote about his time working for Mr Trump goes on sale as planned next week. Asked by reporters about Mr Bolton's book, the president tried to paint Mr Bolton as both dishonest and willing to unveil national security secrets.

But in doing so, Mr Trump added a layer to the onion that is his exceptionally broad view of executive powers – again stretching them, rhetorically at least, farther than any president since perhaps Richard Nixon.

"If he wrote a book, I can't imagine that he can because that's highly classified information," the president told reporters. "Conversations with me, they're highly classified. I told that to the attorney general before."

But Mr Trump went on, adding a crucial qualifier to his definition of classification standards for conversations with a sitting commander in chief that some experts say do not align with federal law or legal precedents.

"I will consider every conversation with me, as president, highly classified," he said. "So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he's broken the law. And I would think that he would have criminal problems. I hope so."

Mr Trump, his Justice Department and White House, and his campaign organisation could try to block Mr Bolton and publisher Simon & Schuster from putting the book, titled "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," on sale. The president threatened to do just that on Monday, saying: "We'll see what happens. They're in court — or they'll soon be in court."

'Sue ... anyone and everyone'

So far, however, team Trump has taken no action beyond the words of Mr Trump and his attorney general, William Barr. (Mr Barr claimed Mr Bolton's book did not undergo the usual vetting process used by all administrations to safeguard classified information.)

The often-emotional and impulsive president sometimes orders his underlings to take actions that ignore legal, health and other realities.

"We have ample evidence over Trump's entire life that he will sue, or threaten to sue, anyone and everyone he doesn't like," Mark Rom, the associate dean for academic affairs at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, said Tuesday. "He tried to sue CNN over a poll he didn't like."

If the president does direct his aides to take Mr Bolton to court, some legal experts predict the president would swiftly suffer another legal loss.

"The president's statement is so outlandish that it will likely come back to haunt his government's lawyers in the litigation. Bolton will surely say it shows how extreme a view of classified information the White House has taken, truly disconnected from existing law," Ryan Goodman of the NYU School of Law and Just Security website, told The Independent on Tuesday.

Keith Whittington of Princeton University noted chiefs executive have national security powers that run wide and deep – but not unlimited ones.

"Presidents have a great deal of discretion to classify and declassify information in the name of national security," he said. "But an absolute retroactive classification of all private presidential communications would not only be unprecedented but unjustifiable under any traditional understanding of presidential authority in this area. ... I cannot imagine the kind of broad claim that the president made ... would be accepted by the courts."

'Qualified, not absolute'

One potential legal avenue would be for Mr Trump to claim executive privilege over all his conversations with Mr Bolton, the same authority that allows any White House to block a list of senior West Wing aides from testifying before Congress. The idea is to allow commanders in chief to get candid advice from their closest advisers without fear of it becoming public.

"The president can invoke the privilege, which is constitutionally rooted, when asked to produce documents or other materials or information that reflect presidential decision-making and deliberations that the president believes should remain confidential," Mort Rosenberg wrote in a report for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). "If the president does so, the materials become presumptively protected from disclosure. The privilege, however, is qualified, not absolute, and can be overcome by an adequate showing of need."

But Mr Rom of Georgetown suggested the courts might embrace Mr Trump's view of broad executive powers – they have done so over and over for decades on issues of national security.

"Trump says, 'If I do it, it is legal.' In this case, he's right: the president has almost unlimited powers to classify information," Mr Rom said. It's not unprecedented, and Trump is likely to prevail in court."

But that doesn't mean Simon & Schuster and Mr Bolton would decide to shelve the book.

"A key question is: Would publication 'irreparably harm' national security? If the answer is that releasing the book harms Trump, but not national security, the publisher might take a chance and publish it," Mr Rom said. "Trump's efforts to shut it down would then just look politically motivated."

Those optics would align with one point that is reportedly a key facet of Mr Bolton's tome: His former boss made key national security and foreign policy decisions based on his worries about his own re-election chances.

One possible outcome of a defiant release could be a federal judge seizing all profits from sales of the Bolton tell-all. That would leave the former George W Bush American ambassador to the UN and Trump national security adviser one lone motivation for making his account public.

"In that case, the only motive for Bolton to move forward would be spite," Mr Rom noted. "We'll see how spiteful Bolton can be."