Ex-defense secretary sues Pentagon over censorship

Former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has argued that the Pentagon “improperly” censored portions of his upcoming memoirs. He said the redactions included conversations with then-US president Donald Trump and foreign officials.

Esper, who served under Trump between July 2019 and November 2020, submitted the manuscript for his book, ‘A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times’, to the Defense Department for prepublication review. The book is due to come out next May.

In the lawsuit filed on Sunday, Esper alleges that important portions of the text were “improperly withheld from publication.”

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper fired and replaced, Trump announces “The withheld text is crucial to telling important stories discussed in the manuscript,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit revealed that, on November 8, Esper emailed his successor, Lloyd Austin, complaining that the Pentagon had instructed him to remove from the book some of the conversations he had had with Trump, as well as quotes by the then-president and other officials during meetings.