Ex-defense secretary sues over withheld material from Trump era memoir

[Lasher]

Source: The Guardian

The former US defense secretary Mark Esper claims in a lawsuit against the defense department that material is being improperly withheld from him as he seeks to publish an “unvarnished and candid memoir” of his time in Donald Trump’s cabinet.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday in the US district court in Washington, describes the memoir, A Sacred Oath, as an account of Esper’s tenure as army secretary from 2017 to 2019 and his 18 months as defense secretary, which ended when Trump fired him in a tweet just days after the president lost his reelection bid.

The period in which Esper was Pentagon chief was “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation, and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the constitution”, the lawsuit says.

Esper and Trump were sharply divided over the use of the military during civil unrest in June 2020 following the killing of George Floyd. Other issues led the president to believe Esper was not sufficiently loyal while Esper believed he was trying to keep the department apolitical. Firing a defense secretary after an election loss was unprecedented, but the opening allowed Trump to install loyalists in top Pentagon positions as he continued to dispute his election loss.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/29/ex-defense-secretary-sues-over-withheld-material-from-trump-era-memoir-mark-esper

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Looks like the DoD is trying to torpedo Esper's forthcoming book.

[KS Toronado]

1. I'll take anything Mark Esper says with a grain of salt

He's a QublicOn for one, and the Pentagon has a right to redact his book.

[Lasher]

2. What right? It's not classified information according to Esper.

Remember, he stood up to Trump at an important moment.

[mopinko]

4. they have the right to censor work by anyone in the military.

my nephew plans to write a book, and it has to be approved by dod.

[Lasher]

6. Esper is not in the military.

The Secretary of Defense has to be a civilian. I think the DoD is going too far in this.

[Grins]

3. From the link...

In the court filing:

"(Esper) wrote that he had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings, not to describe conversations he had with Trump, and not to use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events."

Unless it concerns national security, Esper should prevail in court. What he should do is do what Bolton did - get on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Jake Tapper, CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. and reveal those conversations. It worked with Bolton as the courts said "Water over the damn...!"


And to "not to use certain verbs or nouns?" C'mon...

[Lasher]

5. From a CNN article on the subject:

This is the second time a high-ranking Trump official has had a public standoff with the agency he worked for over information he wanted to include in a book slated for publication. Esper's dispute arose after the Trump administration ended. A previous situation, where the Justice Department unsuccessfully sued former National Security Adviser John Bolton over a book he wrote that was heavily critical of Trump and did not get full sign-off to publish, played out while Trump was still President and, according to former officials, was disputed as a way to protect Trump politically. The Biden administration dropped the government's pursuit of Bolton in June.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/28/politics/esper-defense-department-lawsuit/index.html

Bolton published without full a sign-off. Esper is trying to get approval before he does.