Bolton Book Reveals Trump Asked Chinese President To Help Him Win Reelection, Wanted To Help Out Dictators

The New York Times reports:

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.

Mr. Bolton also adds a striking new allegation by saying that Mr. Trump overtly linked trade negotiations to his own political fortunes by asking President Xi Jinping of China to buy a lot of 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. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”

The Washington Post reports:



Bolton’s 592-page memoir, obtained by The Washington Post, is the most substantive, critical dissection of the president from an administration insider so far, coming from a conservative who has worked in Republican administrations for decades and is a longtime contributor to Fox News. It portrays Trump as an “erratic” and “stunningly uninformed” commander in chief, and lays out a long series of jarring and troubling encounters between the president, his top advisers and foreign leaders.

The book is the subject of an escalating legal battle between the longtime conservative foreign policy hand and the Justice Department, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block its publication by alleging that it contains classified material. Bolton’s attorney has said the book does not contain classified material and that it underwent an arduous review process. Trump allies have already begun launching attacks on Bolton and his motives, including describing him as “Book Deal Bolton.”