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Fire and Fury: President of Macmillan Responds in Memo to Trump's Cease and Desist Demand
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Macmillan Publishers and their President, John Sargent, responded to the Trump administration’s demand they "immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination" of Michael Wolff’s bestselling book, Fire and Fury. In the memo to employees, Mr. Sargent succinctly lays out the constitutional basis for Macmillan’s refusal to comply with this clearly fascist attempt to stifle the free press, and makes it clear this is about much more than just this one book.
Below is Sargent’s full letter:
To: All Macmillan Employees
From: John Sargent
Last Thursday, shortly after 7:00 a.m., we received a demand from the President of the United States to “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination” of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. On Thursday afternoon we responded with a short statement saying that we would publish the book, and we moved the pub date forward to the next day. Later today we will send our legal response to President Trump.
Our response is firm, as it has to be. I am writing you today to explain why this is a matter of great importance. It is about much more than Fire and Fury.
The president is free to call news “fake” and to blast the media. That goes against convention, but it is not unconstitutional. But a demand to cease and desist publication—a clear effort by the President of the United States to intimidate a publisher into halting publication of an important book on the workings of the government—is an attempt to achieve what is called prior restraint. That is something that no American court would order as it is flagrantly unconstitutional.
This is very clearly defined in Supreme Court case law, most prominently in the Pentagon Papers case. As Justice Hugo Black explained in his concurrence:
“Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints. In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.”
Then there is Justice William Brennan’s opinion in The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan:
“Thus we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
And finally Chief Justice Warren Burger in another landmark case:
“The thread running through all these cases is that prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”
There is no ambiguity here. This is an underlying principle of our democracy. We cannot stand silent. We will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our Constitution precludes him or her from achieving in court. We need to respond strongly for Michael Wolff and his book, but also for all authors and all their books, now and in the future. And as citizens we must demand that President Trump understand and abide by the First Amendment of our Constitution.
This is what patriotism looks like.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/8/1730845/-Fire-and-Fury-President-of-Macmillan-Responds-in-Memo-to-Trump-s-Cease-and-Desist-Demand
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/08/us/ap-us-trump-book-publisher-letter.html
40 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
there have been "scandalous" books published for ages - notably Kitty Kelley tomes (usually called "unauthorized biographies" ) that I mentioned in a different thread, and not a one has ever been "banned" or dropped from publication if the subject of the book whined about it.
This one got the $2 million lawsuit from Sinatra, and he eventually dropped it -
Most of the rest of the subjects of her books like the BFEE & Nancy Reagan, pretty much dismissed/ignored the books.
Libel is very hard to prove due to the "malice" test. Carol Burnett was one of the rare ones to prevail against the National Enquirer for it.
There you go! It's in that oath which is explicitly given within said constitution. Either one abides by that oath, or one has no business in the office for which the oath was taken. It is really that simple.
R&
that more people would be upset about this action - not just the details and information exposed in the book.
The PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES, who took an oath to protect the Constitution, initiates an action that goes against the First Amendment of that very Constitution! That is the action of an enemy of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! 
IMPEACH NOW! 
John Sargent
Chief Executive Officer
Macmillan
John Sargent is the CEO of Macmillan; the global trade division of the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck based in Stuttgart, Germany. Macmillan Publishers has major trade publishing operations in the US, the UK, Australia and Germany with smaller operations in South Africa, India and China.
Previously John ran the US operations of Holtzbrinck, including all the trade companies, the Macmillan Higher Education group, St. Martins Scholarly and Reference, Hanley & Belfus medical publishers and Scientific American. He started at Holtzbrinck as CEO of St. Martin’s Press.
Prior to that he had been the CEO of Dorling Kindersley Inc. and the President of the Children’s Book Division of Simon & Schuster. He serves on the executive board of the Association of American Publishers. He has been on the executive committee of Graham Windham, a New York foster care agency for over 20 years including four years as its Chairman.
John received a B.A. in Economics from Stanford and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia. John lives in Brooklyn with his wife Connie and their two children.
Chief Executive Officer
Macmillan
John Sargent is the CEO of Macmillan; the global trade division of the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck based in Stuttgart, Germany. Macmillan Publishers has major trade publishing operations in the US, the UK, Australia and Germany with smaller operations in South Africa, India and China.
Previously John ran the US operations of Holtzbrinck, including all the trade companies, the Macmillan Higher Education group, St. Martins Scholarly and Reference, Hanley & Belfus medical publishers and Scientific American. He started at Holtzbrinck as CEO of St. Martin’s Press.
Prior to that he had been the CEO of Dorling Kindersley Inc. and the President of the Children’s Book Division of Simon & Schuster. He serves on the executive board of the Association of American Publishers. He has been on the executive committee of Graham Windham, a New York foster care agency for over 20 years including four years as its Chairman.
John received a B.A. in Economics from Stanford and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia. John lives in Brooklyn with his wife Connie and their two children.
http://publishers.org/about/john-sargent
He lives in Brooklyn...kinda cool.
