In a withering behind-the-scenes portrayal, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton accused him of sweeping misdeeds that included explicitly seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s help to win re-election.
TRUMP CALLED BOLTON “A LIAR”
Bolton, a longtime foreign policy hawk who Trump fired in September over policy differences, also said that the U.S. president had expressed a willingness to halt criminal investigations to give “personal favors to dictators he liked,” according to a book excerpt published in the New York Times ahead of its release.
Trump hit back at Bolton, calling him “a liar” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. The paper also published excerpts Wednesday of the book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” as did the Washington Post.
Bolton’s allegations provide new ammunition to critics ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, including his behind-the-scenes accounts of Trump’s conversations with China’s Xi – which, in one case, broached the topic of the U.S. vote.