Former national security adviser John Bolton expressed concern to Attorney General William Barr that President Trump “was effectively granting personal favors” to the leaders of China and Turkey, according to a draft of his forthcoming book.
Drafts of Bolton’s unpublished manuscript detailed his worries that last year Trump was giving favors to various autocratic leaders, the New York Times reported on Monday. Barr responded to Bolton’s concerns by noting two Justice Department investigations into companies in those countries and “said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries.”
Barr backed up his point by mentioning conversations the president had with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, including his conversation with Xi about the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE and with Erdogan over the investigation of Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank.
In 2017, ZTE agreed to plead guilty to violating American sanctions on doing business with North Korea and paid heavy fines. A year later, Trump lifted the sanctions. In 2018, Erdogan asked Trump to halt additional enforcement against the bank, which was being investigated on fraud and money-laundering charges for helping Iran avoid U.S. sanctions. However, the Justice Department later indicted the bank.
The latest leak from Bolton’s book, draft copies of which were provided to the White House National Security Council for a review process, comes a day after another leak revealed Bolton also wrote that Trump told him in August that he was withholding nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv assisted with investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump denied telling Bolton that the security aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations in the early hours of Monday morning, tweeting, “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”
The former national security adviser and his publisher Simon & Schuster issued a statement the same day rejecting allegations that they had leaked the manuscript to the New York Times, and his lawyer blamed the leak on a “corrupted” review process.
The “explosive” details from the book caused Democrats to renew their calls for Bolton to testify in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. Meanwhile, Bolton’s former chief of staff called on him to reconsider releasing his book, calling it a “dangerous precedent” that could discourage future presidents from seeking advice on national security matters.
