The ?? ??? ??Room Where it Happened, an upcoming memoir by ex-national security adviser John Bolton, is a big thorn in the side of Donald Trump's White House — so big, in fact, that the administration tried to block it from being published.
That didn't work, but it wouldn't matter much, because the book is already available online on pirate sites, and is turning out to be quite a hit.
According to TorrentFreak, the book was shared on multiple pirate portals, including The Pirate Bay, where it sits on top of the list of most downloaded books.
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"The Room Where It Happened" is very popular on The Pirate Bay. Credit: mashable/thepiratebay A pirated version of the book also been shared on Twitter by a group called Distributed Denial of Secrets, though the tweets were later removed after a takedown notice was sent by ViacomCBS, which owns the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster.
Though pirated copies of the book freely circulating aren't exactly good news for the publisher, they're proof that even if the judge had banned the book from being published, it'd still be widely read.
In fact, federal judge Royce Lamberth, who denied the motion to stop the book from publishing, argues that "a single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop. With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe—many in newsrooms—the damage is done."
SEE ALSO: Facebook, Twitter remove Trump’s manipulated 'toddler besties' video after parent complainsThe memoir, which is due to officially come out on Tuesday, has described Trump as "stunningly uninformed," and is heavily critical of many of his foreign policy decisions. It was originally scheduled for a March release, but the launch was pushed back twice as the White House reviewed it due to concerns of it containing classified information.
Topics Cybersecurity Donald Trump