In an embarrassing depiction of scenes behind the scenes, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton accused President Donald Trump of making serious mistakes, including that he had explicitly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help with his second-term election.
Bolton also said that the US President expressed his willingness to stop criminal investigations and provide "personal favors to tyrants who love them," according to an excerpt published in the New York Times from Bolton's book, "From the Hall of Events ... Notes from the White House."
Bolton is one of the hawks of US foreign policy, and Trump sacked him last September in the midst of policy rows.
Trump told Fox News in a separate interview that Bolton had broken the law by including highly classified information in the book. The excerpts portray a president who has been ridiculed by his top advisers and exposes himself to charges of incompetence, far more than those that drove the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to seek accountability and isolation last year.
The Republican-controlled US Congress cleared Trump in early February, and Trump was facing charges of suspending military aid to Ukraine last year, to pressure its President Volodymyr Zelinsky to reveal information harmful to his Democratic rival in the US presidential election, Joe Biden.
Bolton said in excerpts of the book published by the "Wall Street Journal" the day before yesterday: "If the pro-accountability Democrats were not preoccupied with the Ukraine issue in 2019, and if they used the time to investigate in a more systematic way on Trump's path in his overall foreign policies, the result of the accountability may have been different." Completely".
Reluctance
Bolton's critics point out that he has refrained from testifying in a House of Representatives questioning, at a time when his speech may have been extremely important.
Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who led the prosecution team in the Republican Trump's accountability case, launched an attack on Bolton, who at the time threatened that he would "file a lawsuit if he is summoned to appear before the commission of inquiry."
"He preferred to keep the information for a book ... Bolton may have been an author, but he lacks the national sense," Schiff said on his Twitter account.
However, Bolton's book provides a new excuse for Trump's critics before the November 3 presidential election, including discussions attributed to Trump with the Chinese president, which once touched on the topic of the US elections.
In the most distorted portrayal of the Trump administration by a figure she once worked with, Bolton wrote: “Then Trump turned, surprisingly, the conversation to the next US presidential election, alluding to China's economic ability, and appealing to Xi to work on his victory.”
"If these stories are true, they will not only be morally repugnant, but will violate Donald Trump's sacred duty to the American people," Biden said in a statement.
In a testimony before the Senate, US Trade Representative Robert La Teezyer said that Bolton's account was "absolutely incorrect." He continued, “I was present at the meeting. Can't remember anything crazy? I would definitely remember. ” "Certainly, this never happened at the meeting. This is utter insanity. ”
The US government has filed a lawsuit to prevent Bolton from publishing the book, citing national security risks, as it seeks a court hearing today (Friday).
Simon & Schuster, publisher of the charges, rejected the accusations, saying it had already distributed "hundreds of thousands of copies".
Bolton cited countless conversations in which Trump showed "absolutely unacceptable behavior that undermined the legitimacy of the presidency itself."
Despite Trump's public criticism of journalists, Bolton's book attributed to the US president statements from his most talked-to-stop statements. During a meeting in New Jersey in the summer of 2019, Trump said, according to Bolton's account, that journalists must be imprisoned in order to reveal their sources: “These people must be executed, They are scum, "according to other excerpts published by The Washington Post.
Trump said, according to Bolton's account, that journalists must be put in prison to reveal their sources: "These people must be executed, they are scum."
- The book's extracts depicted a president who was ridiculed by his top advisers and exposes himself to charges of incompetence, far more than those that prompted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to seek accountability and isolation last year.