The Trump administration on Tuesday went to court in Washington in an effort to block the publication of former national security adviser John Bolton's memoir.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, named only Bolton as a defendant. The complaint seeks among other things an order requiring Bolton "to instruct or request his publisher, insofar as he has the authority to do so, to further delay the release date" of the memoir.

"This is a civil action by the United States to prevent Defendant John R. Bolton, a former National Security Advisor, from compromising national security by publishing a book containing classified information—in clear breach of agreements he signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of gaining access to highly classified information and in clear breach of the trust placed within him by the United States Government," Justice Department lawyers said in the complaint.

The lawsuit, brought by the DOJ's civil division, sets up a potential fiery clash over the scope of the First Amendment, and it comes just weeks before the book is set for public release. News reports indicate Bolton's memoir "The Room Where It Happened" is due out June 23.

A manuscript of Bolton's book was at the heart of the Senate's impeachment trial after The New York Times reported that it detailed conversations in which Trump directly linked Ukraine announcing investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden to lifting a hold on military aid to the country.

Bolton's memoir reportedly presents an "inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process" inside the Trump White House.

Bolton said he would have testified at Trump's impeachment had U.S. senators issued a subpoena. Writing recently at The Washington Post, Trump critic George Conway said Bolton's "fatal misjudgment" was overestimating the willingness of Senate Republicans to vote with Democrats to issue the subpoena.

"The only way to make sense of Bolton's behavior is to recognize that he actually did intend and expected to testify. He wanted to testify, but wanted to appear to be forced to do it," Conway wrote. "Perhaps he thought that, as a reluctant witness, he'd be less open to being caricatured as a disgruntled, discharged adviser, and his credibility would have been enhanced. So he insisted on a court order to appear before the House."

The White House has claimed that Bolton's manuscript contains classified information that cannot be published. "The unauthorized disclosure of classified information could be exploited by a foreign power, thereby causing significant harm to the national security of the United States," a White House lawyer, John Eisenberg, wrote in a letter, according to The New York Times.

Bolton is represented by Charles Cooper of Cooper & Kirk, a leading attorney in Washington who has represented notable conservative figures. The Washington Post recently cited a statement from Simon & Schuster that Bolton took steps to make sure his book posed no threat to the national security.

Read the lawsuit United States v. Bolton:

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Mike Scarcella contributed reporting from Washington.