So six weeks from now thousands of copies of John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where it Happened” will be dumped on display tables in book stores all over the country. If we don’t already know everything that’s in it by then via the current steady drip of leaks, curious readers can whip out their plastic and take home as their own personal property.

That is unless, of course, The White House and the Justice Department don’t come up with a Dershowitz-like convolution of laws and prevent the thing from ever seeing the light of day … or at least until after the November election. (Bet on that.)

But until March 17, the thinking goes, Mr. Bolton could throw a dart at a wall map of any of the hundreds of media outlets panting for an exclusive interview with him. An interview where he could, you know, tell his story, if telling his story really is invested with the kind of pure, patriotic impulse we’re led to believe it is. Hell, he could drop the interview next Tuesday afternoon, hours before Dear Leader/King Donald gives his State of the Union address (to the frenzied, roaring “huzzahs!” of his Republican hostages/protectors).

That would be fun, wouldn’t it?

But of course Mr. Bolton, besides being a deeply-committed Constitutionalist and warrior for vigorous American morality is also a guy trying to make living. And the $2 million (minus agent fees, etc.) he’s getting for telling the story of Trump’s Putin-inspired shakedown of Ukraine may likely be the biggest check he’s ever going to see.

So, he wants to maximize his bottom-line royalty pay-off by, well, by not giving away the juice before public has bought the bottle, to use an awkward metaphor.

But it isn’t just Bolton who’s calculating the timing on telling the full story and running the numbers. You gotta know his publisher, the venerable Simon & Schuster, is war-gaming the same scenarios. They after all have written the $2 million advance check, (usually a series of checks, the last of which comes on actual publication), and, like all good patriotic businessmen and women are as committed to reclaiming their investment (and then some) as they are to revealing the truth of a historic national scandal to the American public.

(As I understand these things, Bolton, having lived up to his end of the contract, keeps his $2 million no matter what. But Simon & Schuster — a subsidiary of Viacom/CBS — pays itself back by taking the lion’s share of book sale proceeds until those sales pay off the $2 million, at which point Bolton starts seeing royalty checks. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.)

My point being that it isn’t just crusty, ornery, neo-conservative relic John Bolton play a self-serving game with vital, highly-consequential information, it’s also a respected Manhattan publishing house. (I mean, Carly Simon might still have a stake in the place).

If the national interest were a serious concern of Simon & Schuster’s I believe they could cut a revised deal with Bolton to “enhance” his return and “encourage” him to accept — today — any one or two or ten of the hundreds of requests for interviews. Hell, they could start with “60 Minutes” right there in their corporate family.

Not that anything Bolton or anyone else could ever say or prove would make a whit of difference to your average Lamar Alexander, Marco Rubio or Lisa Murkowski.

I mean, this is America! We can’t convict a guilty man!