John Bolton

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Five bombshells about Trump from Bolton's book
Yahoo News
DAVID KNOWLES
Jun 17th 2020 5:38PM

Excerpts from former national security adviser John Bolton’s book about his time in the Trump administration paint a damning view of the president as a “stunningly uninformed” man who was outmatched by the job he was elected to do, according to three newspapers that obtained advance copies of the book.

The White House has sought to block the publication of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,filing suit against Bolton this week. In doing so, however, the Trump administration has helped elevate the memoir’s profile, sending it to the top of bestseller lists nationwide even before it is published on June 23. Excerpts published Tuesday by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post contain numerous bombshells. Here are some of the most explosive:

Trump asked China’s Xi for help with his reelection

In an excerpt published in the Wall St. Journal, Bolton, who resigned from the administration in September, wrote the following: “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility to China among the Democrats. Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton wrote. “He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Trump told Xi he approved of building Chinese concentration camps for Uighur citizens

Another excerpt published by the Journal deals with conversations between Trump and Xi about the construction of concentration camps for China’s largely Muslim Uighur minority, whose loyalty to Beijing is considered suspect by the regime. “At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang,” Bolton wrote. “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.”

Trump spoke of executing U.S. journalists who didn’t reveal sources for stories

According to excerpts provided to the Washington Post, Bolton details a July 2019 meeting with the president during which Trump complained bitterly about the media coverage he had received. Specifically, Trump railed against journalists who refused to reveal the sources for their stories, Bolton said. “These people should be executed,” Trump said in the meeting, according to Bolton. “They are scumbags.”

Pompeo and other Trump staffers derided the president behind his back

An excerpt published by the New York Times recounts an incident that occurred at Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Bolton a note about Trump that read, “He is so full of s***.”

Shortly after he began in his post, Bolton was told by former chief of staff John Kelly, “You can’t imagine how desperate I am to get out of here.” Kelly, according to Bolton’s retelling, then added, “This is a bad place to work, as you will find out.”

Democrats botched Trump’s impeachment by focusing on Ukraine

In the excerpts published by the Times, Bolton is sharply critical of Democrats in Congress for limiting their impeachment proceedings on Trump’s quid pro quo with Ukrainian leaders to help secure his reelection. Instead, Bolton writes, they should have expanded their inquiry to a host of misdeeds on the part of the president, including what he describes as improper involvement on behalf of authoritarian governments in China and Turkey.

“A president may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guise of national interest,” Bolton wrote. “Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests,” he adds, “there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had been perpetrated.”

Bolton refused to testify in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Quote :

According to excerpts provided to the Washington Post, Bolton details a July 2019 meeting with the president during which Trump complained bitterly about the media coverage he had received. Specifically, Trump railed against journalists who refused to reveal the sources for their stories, Bolton said. “These people should be executed,” Trump said in the meeting, according to Bolton. “They are scumbags.”

Scumbags, for sure.

Bolton could still face charges for tell-all book on Trump, experts say
Jenna McLaughlin, National Security and Investigations Reporter,Yahoo News • June 18, 2020

On Wednesday, the Trump administration took former national security adviser John Bolton to court in a last-ditch attempt to halt the June 23 publication of his memoir “The Room Where It Happened.” Almost at the same time, however, news outlets began publishing revealing excerpts of Bolton’s experiences in the White House between 2018 and 2019.

While legal experts say the government has little hope in stopping the book’s release, as hundreds of thousands of copies have already been mailed out across the globe, that won’t necessarily inoculate Bolton from potential criminal and civil penalties.

“Halting the publication is a fool’s errand being pursued no doubt only to please the president,” Bradley Moss, a partner at Washington national security law firm Mark Zaid, said in an email to Yahoo News. But Bolton’s alleged failure to comply with the government’s mandatory prepublication review process, which can sometimes take years, will almost certainly allow the government to seize the profits, Moss added. “They’re absolutely getting all the money from the book,” he wrote.

Trump went even further on Monday when he suggested Bolton should face criminal charges from the Department of Justice for revealing classified information. The government has rarely, if ever, charged former employees with leaking classified information in their books because doing so in a court of law would require an examination of the information it seeks to keep hidden. Further complicating a possible criminal charge against Bolton is the fact that the president has already characterized the material in the memoir as a “compilation of lies.” By definition, lies can’t be classified.

According to Wednesday’s DOJ filing seeking an injunction against the book’s publication, Ellen Knight, White House senior director for records access and information security management, never gave written approval that the book could proceed to publication, even though Bolton removed sensitive material from the manuscript at her request. Multiple government officials, including Trump loyalist Michael Ellis, who now holds the position of the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, as well as National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone and counterintelligence chief Bill Evanina, were concerned about sensitive information that remains in the book.

Nakasone wrote in an affidavit that Bolton’s book, if published, “could result in the permanent loss” of a source of electronic signals intelligence leading to “irreparable damage.”  

When asked whether the intelligence community would be prepared to substantiate their concerns in a court of law, a DNI spokesperson told Yahoo News that “it’s not our policy to discuss ongoing litigation matters,” and that her office was focused on their duty to protect information contained in excerpts of the book that have already “jeopardized national security.” The NSA declined to comment, referring Yahoo News to the White House. The White House declined to comment on its legal strategy.

It remains possible that the Department of Justice will choose to make an example of Bolton to deter other former national security officials from publishing their memoirs absent review — if only to instill the fear of losing out on a big payday.

“Bolton was on notice that the book still contained classified information, and then intentionally disregarded this and proceeded to publish,” Andrew Bakaj, a former intelligence officer and founding partner of national security firm Compass Rose Legal Group, said in an email. “Seeing how vindictive this administration is, this should be a real concern for him,” he continued.

“If you recklessly handle classified information and it does get out, you can go to jail for it,” said Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who has represented multiple clients in prepublication review issues. These include Matt Bissonnette, author of “No Easy Day,” a best-selling firsthand account of the mission that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Bissonnette forfeited the net proceeds from the book in a civil case and settled with a previous lawyer. While the Justice Department threatened Bissonnette with criminal charges, prosecutors ultimately dropped multiple investigations.

Parlatore, who said Bissonnette’s case was different because the book did not contain classified information, said DOJ still faces similar challenges in making a case against Bolton. “In prosecuting somebody for revealing classified information, you have to get into that classified information … on some level, prosecuting somebody lends credibility to their story,” he said. Plus, there’s the complicated matter of choosing a jury, as well as determining which sections of the book might be false, he continued. “It’s a tough decision DOJ has to make,” he said.

Bolton’s lawyers and publishers insist the administration is only trying to prevent embarrassment. Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, wrote in a statement that Bolton complied with the review process and that the DOJ’s court filing “is nothing more than the latest in a long-running series of efforts by the administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president.”

While it’s unclear which specific tools or sensitive sources the intelligence community fears Bolton is risking, excerpts of the book released so far reveal a number of personal conversations Bolton was privy to involving the president and foreign leaders.

According to news reports from outlets that obtained an advance copy of the book, Trump not only sought assistance with his reelection campaign by asking Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s family, the basis for his impeachment by the House in December, but also from Chinese President Xi Jinping, asking him to purchase agricultural crops to secure support amongst farmers deemed critical to securing a second term. Trump also made several embarrassing or outrageous comments, according to Bolton, including failing to realize Britain was a nuclear power, believing Finland was a part of Russia, and encouraging Xi Jinping to continue to build concentration camps for Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in China. In Bolton’s retelling, In an effort to distract the press from his daughter Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account to conduct government business, Trump even praised Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman following the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence agencies have linked to the prince himself.

Bolton, while he may have skipped a few steps, joins a long list of former intelligence and national security officials who have wrestled with the onerous prepublication review process.

Nada Bakos, a former CIA officer who helped track down top al-Qaida terrorists in the Middle East, filed a lawsuit against the CIA in 2018 after waiting two years for a review of her manuscript. Without a clear explanation, large chunks of the book were deemed sensitive and blacked out, rendering the narrative unreadable. The book was ultimately published in June 2019.

In perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of tug-of-war between the government and a retired intelligence officer, the Defense Intelligence Agency bought up and shredded nearly the entire first printing — almost 10,000 copies — of the Afghan war memoir “Operation Dark Heart,” by retired U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. In Bolton’s case, it’s likely there are already too many copies circulating to purchase them all.

Shaffer, president of conservative think tank London Center for Policy Research, became famous when he made disclosures to Congress alleging the Pentagon kept secret evidence his unit gathered about the 9/11 hijackers a year before their attacks, a claim the Department of Defense inspector general was later unable to substantiate. Shaffer was approached to write the memoir following his congressional testimony, he told Yahoo News in a phone interview. He says he kept the Army informed the entire time, got the book approved and was only met with resistance late in the process by the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he had been employed as a civilian. His legal team complied with the DIA’s requests and revised the book for its second reprinting, but journalists had already received review copies of the book. The agency’s book-buying stunt only made it more popular.

“The American people have a right to see and understand how their tax dollars are being spent,” Shaffer said. “The stuff I’m talking about in print, it’s gone, it’s done, it’s looking at lessons learned and mistakes made.” He, unlike Bolton, Shaffer said, did everything he was asked by the government, though he protested behind the scenes against things he believed were wrongfully classified, such as the names of colleagues he had spoken to personally and the inclusion of protected disclosures he made to Congress.

Many former government officials have complained about the unequal standards applied to former senior officials versus those who retired at a lower rank when speaking or writing publicly, particularly for former officials who have received lucrative television contracts and have been able to speak without getting their frequent remarks approved before going on air. One source told Yahoo News that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has long been considering revising its standards for former officials to speak or write publicly, though no further guidance has been put out recently.

In a statement to the press on Wednesday evening, DNI head Ratcliffe appeared to directly address this discrepancy, and hinted that Bolton, despite his former high rank, would be held accountable the same way anyone else would.

“Regardless of rank or position, every individual entrusted with access to our nation’s secrets has a legal duty and responsibility to protect classified information,” said Ratcliffe. “As the Director of National Intelligence, I am authorized and obligated by law to protect the critical work of the Intelligence Community from any and all unauthorized disclosures, which is what I have done today.”

John Bolton: Criminal inquiry opened into explosive memoir
BBC | 8 hours ago

President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton is being investigated for possibly disclosing classified information when he published his memoir in June.

The US Department of Justice launched a criminal case after failing to stop the publication of The Room Where It Happened book.

Mr Bolton denies all the accusations.

In the book, Mr Trump is depicted as a president ignorant of geopolitical facts.

Mr Bolton, who served as MrTrump's national security adviser in 2018-19, also alleges the president's decisions are driven by a desire for re-election

At the time of publication, President Trump made it clear that he wanted his former aide prosecuted, describing him as "grossly incompetent" and "a liar".

The case would focus on Mr Bolton's claim that his manuscript had passed through a pre-publication national security review, and claims by critics that it did not complete that review.

A grand jury convened by the Department of Justice has now formally issued subpoenas to the Simon & Schuster publishing company and the Javelin Agency, which represents Mr Bolton.

In a statement, Mr Bolton's lawyer Charles J. Cooper said: "Ambassador Bolton emphatically rejects any claim that he acted improperly, let alone criminally, in connection with the publication of his book, and he will cooperate fully, as he has throughout, with any official inquiry into his conduct."

What does the book say about President Trump?

Many of Mr Bolton's allegations are based on private conversations and are impossible to verify.

Among them are the following claims:

President Trump sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win the 2020 vote, stressing the "importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome"

He also said China's construction of internment camps in the Xinjiang region was the "right thing to do"
President Trump was willing to intervene in criminal investigations "to, in effect, give personal favours to dictators he liked". Mr Bolton said Mr Trump was willing to assist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a case involving a Turkish company

The US leader said invading Venezuela would be "cool" and that the South American nation was "really part of the United States"

Mr Trump was unaware the UK was a nuclear power and once asked a senior aide if Finland was part of Russia

Just days before the book's publication, President Trump said the book was "made up of lies and fake stories".

"Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!" Mr Trump said in a tweet.