President Donald Trump questioned why former national security adviser John Bolton did not raise complaints about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine earlier, even though Bolton brought the issue to White House lawyers.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Bolton after a leaked book manuscript authored by the former Trump adviser claimed that the president directly told Bolton that he wanted to keep a freeze on $391 million in aid to Ukraine until the country agreed to help with investigations into the Bidens.
“Why didn’t John Bolton complain about this ‘nonsense’ a long time ago, when he was very publicly terminated,” Trump tweeted. “He said, not that it matters, NOTHING!”
Bolton did complain:
Bolton’s manuscript said that he did bring up the issue with White House lawyers, warning that Giuliani may be leveraging his work with Trump to benefit his other clients, according to The New York Times.
Former Bolton deputy Fiona Hill also testified to Congress that Bolton told her to report discussions about pressing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens to White House lawyers.
“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill, according to her testimony. “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” Bolton said, according to Hill.
Trump rages at Bolton even though he didn’t leak the manuscript:
Trump repeatedly lashed out at Bolton on Twitter, suggesting that Bolton was responsible for the leak even though his attorneys repeatedly denied that the leak came from him and suggested it likely came from someone at the White House.
“For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, ‘begged’ me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir,’ takes the job, mistakenly says ‘Libyan Model’ on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “All Classified National Security. Who would do this?”
