Judge's ruling allows government to proceed with lawsuit against John Bolton over his book

A judge's ruling on Thursday will allow the Trump administration to continue its legal battle against former National Security Adviser John Bolton regarding his book, "The Room Where It Happened."

A lawsuit claims that Bolton breached agreements with the U.S. government by divulging classified material and by not finishing a required pre-publication review, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth on Thursday denied a motion to dismiss the complaint. He noted that the Department of Justice “plausibly pleads that Bolton breached those obligations,” the outlet reported.

The judge's ruling permits the suit, which includes the government's goal of confiscating book proceeds, to continue.

In June the judge did not grant a government request to block publication of the book, though he chided Bolton for proceeding with the publication instead of waiting for official notice that it was cleared, according to the outlet.

“Even if Bolton operated out of an abundance of caution in submitting his manuscript for review, the very existence of his caution leads to a fair inference that Bolton was less than certain as to the status of the manuscript,” the judge wrote in Thursday's ruling. “And the allegation that classified material was actually present in the manuscript makes it more likely that Bolton harbored doubts as to whether everything in his manuscript was unclassified.”

Bolton's attorneys have asserted that their client dealt with White House career official Ellen Knight in order to have the book combed for classified material, and that she finished the check in April and found that the work did not include classified information.

A statement submitted by a lawyer for Knight said that subsequent to notifying National Security Counsel lawyers about her plan to approve the manuscript for publication, she was instructed to inform Bolton that the issue was "ongoing." Knight eventually found out that a White House official was tasked with another check of Bolton's work. 

Michael Ellis, the person carrying out that review, identified many areas in the book that he thought to be classified.