Former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton claims in his upcoming book that President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase agricultural purchases from the U.S. to improve his electoral prospects in farm states, according to advance copies.
The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that the book, which the administration is suing Mr. Bolton to block its release next week, alleges several incidents in which the president’s dealings with foreign leaders reflected primarily his re-election interests.
“I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Mr. Bolton writes.
He also alleges that Mr. Trump promised Turkish Presiden Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018 that he would “take care of” a Justice Department investigation into the Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank, after Mr. Erdogan said the bank was innocent.
Mr. Bolton wrote “The Room Where It Happened” after he was fired by the president over foreign policy disagreements in September. He reportedly was paid a $2 million advance for the manuscript.
The Justice Department filed suit against Mr. Bolton in federal court on Tuesday, saying he hadn’t completed a pre-publication review that is mandatory for books written by top officials with security clearance. The government says his book contains classified material, some of it “top secret,” and that national security would be harmed if it’s published.
In excerpts cited by the two newspapers, Mr. Bolton claims that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped him a note during Mr. Trump’s 2018 summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un. The note said of the president, “He is so full of [expletive].”
Mr. Pompeo allegedly dismissed Mr. Trump’s North Korea diplomacy as having “zero probability of success.”
White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said Wednesday that the government’s effort to block the book’s release is about national security, not Mr. Trump’s personal interests.
“I would just think that it’s very important to the nation’s security, not even the president himself, but for the presidency itself and the nation’s security to make sure the review processes have been completed,” she said.
