Former national security adviser John Bolton has long been at odds with the Trump administration, particularly when it came to his upcoming book that was believed to detail his time in the White House and paint an unsavory portrait of the President in the process.
For their part, the White House had not yet completed a full intelligence review of the book, meaning that the highest office in the land has not yet approved of the book hitting shelves – at least not from a national security clearance position.
Despite that, Bolton and his team printed and shipped the book to warehouses, only to have the DOJ turn around and sue him in an attempt to prevent its release.
As the nation awaited the ramifications of that legal maneuver, Bolton’s book leaked to the press…and with all of the salacious details intact.
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
And that’s far from all…
Mr. Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia, Mr. Bolton writes. He came closer to withdrawing the United States from NATO than previously known. Even top advisers who position themselves as unswervingly loyal mock him behind his back. During Mr. Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s leader, according to the book, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Mr. Bolton a note disparaging the president, saying, “He is so full of s**t.”
A month later, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Pompeo dismissed the president’s North Korea diplomacy, declaring that there was “zero probability of success.”
President Trump responded to the news on Twitter late Wednesday night, attempting to undermine Bolton’s credibility by reminding the nation that the former national security adviser was once an ardent supporter of Donald Trump’s, and whose tune changed just in time for him to write a book about his time in the West Wing.
