US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said former national security adviser John Bolton is not dissimilar to controversial National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, Fox News reported.

Pompeo described Bolton's memoir as "both said and dangerous."

"The president and others, myself included, had to cut him out of meetings," Pompeo said of Bolton.

According to him, based on what he has seen of the book, "there's lots of falsehoods, there's lots of lies contained in there."

It was a really difficult situation where John Bolton thought he was more important than the president of the United States and the American people," he added.

"This president's foreign policy is something that John Bolton should've been proud of and instead he stepped away in a way that fundamentally misrepresents what we've done. Frankly," Pompeo added, "the information that he's released puts criminal liability squarely on him.

"We saw what happened when people [de]classify information like Edward Snowden. What John Bolton did here is not dissimilar from that, and while we will leave open for the Justice Department to take its action, this kind of information getting out presents real risk and real harm to America."

John Bolton's book 'The Room Where It Happened' is set to be released on Tuesday this week.

According to the Justice Department, there were classified items that remained in the book, including some as "exceptionally restricted."

Trump had earlier said that every conversation with him is "highly classified."

Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to criminally charge John Bolton with disclosing classified information or not.