Bolton Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling Episodes (The New York Times) — Hearing Document, The Unemployment Pandemic: Addressing America's Jobs Crisis
Summary
This hearing-record page holds an exhibit, a New York Times article published June 17, 2020 and updated June 18, 2020, headed Bolton Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling Episodes. It reports that John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, says in his new book that the House impeachment inquiry should have examined other instances in which the president sought to use trade negotiations and criminal investigations to further political interests. The article says the Justice Department went to court seeking to stop publication, that Mr. Trump responded on Twitter denying the book's account, and that a Justice Department spokeswoman denied Mr. Bolton's version of certain conversations. The file footer labels the exhibit a Raskin UC item for a 2020.06.18 Select Subc Hearing - Jobs.
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- Hearing The Unemployment Pandemic Addressing America S Jobs Crisis Notice Added 06 12 2020 At 12 05 Am
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“Bolton Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling Episodes (The New York Times) — Hearing Document, The Unemployment Pandemic: Addressing America's Jobs Crisis.”
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6/18/2020 Bolton's Book Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling Actions - The New York Times
https://nyti.ms/2ChLgtf
Bolton Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling
Episodes
In his new book, John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, describes instances when the president sought to halt
criminal inquiries. He also says President Trump’s loyalists mocked him behind his back.
By Pe te r Bake r
Published June 17, 2020 Updated June 18, 2020, 11:27 a.m. ET
[Read our 5 takeaways from John Bolton’s book.]
John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, says in his new book that the House in its impeachment inquiry should have
investigated President Trump not just for pressuring Ukraine but for a variety of instances when he sought to use trade negotiations and
criminal investigations to further his political interests.
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed a 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, saying that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
Mr. Bolton also adds a striking new accusation by describing how Mr. Trump overtly linked tariff talks with China to his own political
fortunes by asking President Xi Jinping to buy American agricultural products to help him win farm states in this year’s election. Mr.
Trump, he writes, was “pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” Mr. Bolton said that Mr. Trump “stressed the importance of farmers, and
increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
The book, “The Room Where It Happened,” was obtained by The New York Times in advance of its scheduled publication next Tuesday and
has already become a political lightning rod in the thick of an election campaign and a No. 1 best seller on Amazon.com even before it hits
the bookstores. The Justice Department went to court on Wednesday for the second time this week seeking to stop publication even as Mr.
Trump’s critics complained that Mr. Bolton should have come forward during impeachment proceedings rather than save his account for a
$2 million book contract.
The State Department had no comment, but Mr. Trump fired back on Twitter just after midnight. “Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly
tedious’(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories,” he wrote early Thursday morning, adding: “A disgruntled boring fool who
only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!”
Intelligence briefings with the president were a waste of time, Mr. Bolton writes, “since much of the time was spent listening to Trump,
rather than Trump listening to the briefers.” Mr. Trump likes pitting staff members against one another, at one point telling Mr. Bolton that
former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had once referred to Nikki R. Haley, then the ambassador to the United Nations, by a sexist
obscenity — an assertion Mr. Bolton seemed to doubt but found telling that the president would make.
Mr. Trump said so many things that were wrong or false that Mr. Bolton in the book regularly includes phrases like “(the opposite of the
truth)” after some quote from the president. And Mr. Trump in this telling has no overarching philosophy of governance or foreign policy,
but rather a series of gut-driven instincts that sometimes mirrored Mr. Bolton’s but other times were, in his view, dangerous and reckless.
“His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy,” Mr.
Bolton writes. “That had its pros and cons.”
Mr. Bolton is a complicated, controversial figure. An official under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush and George W. Bush’s
United Nations ambassador, Mr. Bolton has been one of Washington’s most vocal advocates for a hard-line foreign policy, a supporter of
the Iraq war who has favored possible military action against rogue states like North Korea and Iran.
file:///S:/Hearings/2020.06.18 Select Subc Hearing - Jobs/UCs/2020-06-18. Raskin UC -Bolton's Book Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troublin… 1/2
6/18/2020 Bolton's Book Says Trump Impeachment Inquiry Missed Other Troubling Actions - The New York Times
Like Mr. Tillerson and other officials who went to work for Mr. Trump believing they could manage him, Mr. Bolton agreed to become the
president’s third national security adviser in 2018 thinking he understood the risks and limits.
Mr. Bolton writes that he raised concerns about both cases with Mr. Barr, who shared them. “Barr said he was very worried about the
appearances Trump was creating,” Mr. Bolton writes. Similarly, he recalls, Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, “was plainly stunned
at Trump’s approach to law enforcement, or lack thereof.”
Just as Mr. Trump sought Ukraine’s help against his domestic rivals, he similarly married his own political interests with policy during a
meeting with Mr. Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting last summer in Osaka, Japan, according to the book. Mr. Xi told
Mr. Trump that unnamed political figures in the United States were trying to start a new cold war with China.
“Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among
the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic
capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” (Mr. Bolton says he would have printed Mr. Trump’s exact
words, “but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”)
Robert Lighthizer, the president’s trade representative, denied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump sought election help from China during that
While other books by journalists, lower-level former aides and even an anonymous senior
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At a daily news conference on Friday, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said Chinese officials “have no intention and
will not interfere in the internal affairs and elections of the United States.”
Mr. Barr, for his part, denied Mr. Bolton’s version of their conversations. “There was no discussion of ‘personal favors’ or ‘undue influence’
on investigations, nor did Attorney General Barr state that the president’s conversations with foreign leaders was improper,” said Kerri
Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
Mr. Bolton does not say these were necessarily impeachable offenses and adds that he does not know everything that happened with regard
to all of these episodes, but he reported at least some of them to Mr. Barr and Mr. Cipollone. They should have been investigated by the
House, Mr. Bolton says, and at the very least they constituted abuses of a president’s duty to put the nation’s interests ahead of his own.
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