Donald Trump is trying to stop the release of John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” but since several journalists already have copies in hand, leaks have begun of significant passages.
The first comes from The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, who writes:
President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton.
In an excerpt published in The Wall Street Journal, Bolton wrote, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”
And The New York Times Peter Baker writes that Bolton says: “the House in its impeachment inquiry should have investigated President Trump not just for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic foes but for a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons.”
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.
Bolton also demonstrates why his testimony would have been important during the impeachment trial.
One other interesting note, Bolton isn’t the only one who has harsh words about the president. He also throws the Secretary of State under the bus, saying Mike Pompeo offered up his own criticism of the president.
Trump also told Xi, according to the book, that Americans were clamoring for Trump to serve more than two terms.