Bolton Slams White House for Effort to ‘Suppress’ His Memoir
Former national security adviser John Bolton criticized the White House on Monday for what he termed its efforts to censor his memoir on working in the Trump administration.
“For all the focus on Ukraine and the impeachment trial and all that, to me, there are portions of the manuscript that deal with Ukraine, I view that like the sprinkles on the ice cream sundae in terms of what’s in the book,” Bolton told an audience at Duke University. “This is an effort to write history and I did it the best I can. We’ll have to see what comes out of the censorship.” Bolton also said he hoped the book would survive the pre-publication review process.
“I’m hoping ultimately I can get the book published,” Bolton said. “I hope it’s not suppressed.”
Information from Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, was leaked towards the end of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Bolton reportedly wrote that Trump had specifically conditioned military aid to Ukraine on a commitment by that country to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
Republican senators including Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) called on Bolton to publicly state whatever information relevant to the trial he had written in the book. However, Bolton declined to do so, and Democrats failed to convince enough Senate Republicans to vote to call witnesses in the impeachment trial, dashing Democrats’ hopes that Bolton could be called to testify.
