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VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump engaged in interactions with various world leaders, including China\u2019s Xi Jinping, to undermine national interests for his own political gains, according to Trump\u2019s former National Security Adviser John Bolton.<\/p>\n
In an op-ed in Wednesday\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Bolton writes that during the 2018 G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Trump asked Xi to increase China\u2019s purchase of American agricultural products to help Trump secure votes in farm states in the November 2020 U.S. election, in return for a more favorable tariff rate on Chinese goods.<\/p>\n Bolton writes that in their meeting of June 29, 2019, during the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Xi told Trump that the U.S.-China relationship was the most important in the world.<\/p>\n Trump, Bolton writes, \u201cstunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, pleading with Xi to ensure he\u2019d win.\u201d<\/p>\n The same account of the Trump-Xi interaction is laid out in Bolton\u2019s 592-page upcoming book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir<\/em>, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times<\/em> and The Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe (Trump) stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump\u2019s exact words, but the government\u2019s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n The book is scheduled to be released next week, but it is embroiled in an escalating legal battle. \u00a0The Justice Department filed an emergency order Wednesday night to block publication of Bolton\u2019s book, a day after filing a lawsuit on Tuesday to potentially stop its publication. The administration argues that Bolton breached nondisclosure agreements and was risking national security.<\/p>\n During an interview on Fox News Channel Wednesday night, Trump said Bolton \u201cbroke the law\u201d by revealing \u201cclassified information.\u201d \u00a0The president expressed similar views during a White House event Tuesday, calling the book a \u201ccriminal liability.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat to me is a very strong criminal problem,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd he knows he’s got classified information. Any conversation with me is classified, but then it becomes even worse if he lies about the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump and Attorney General William Barr allege that Bolton did not complete the White House manuscript review process. Bolton\u2019s lawyer says the book does not contain classified material and that it underwent a review process that was concluded in April.<\/p>\n White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany during a briefing with reporters Wednesday repeated the administration\u2019s claim. She said Bolton \u201cshould know all too well that it’s unacceptable to have highly classified information from the government of the United States in a book that will be published.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n In his book, Bolton says that the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives should have expanded their 2019 Trump impeachment inquiry beyond whether the U.S. president pressured Ukraine\u2019s leader to dig up political dirt on his presumed rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in exchange for military aid. Bolton says Democrats should have looked at other instances where the president allegedly intervened in law enforcement matters for political reasons.<\/p>\n Bolton describes situations where Trump appeared willing to stop criminal investigations \u201cto, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,\u201d citing cases involving major firms including Turkey\u2019s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese telecom giant ZTE to benefit Xi.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn\u2019t accept,\u201d writes Bolton, adding that he reported his concerns to Barr.<\/p>\n Bolton\u2019s book also describes how in Osaka, Trump signaled his approval of China\u2019s internment of as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims, an ethnic minority in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n During an opening dinner of the 2019 G-20 meeting in Osaka attended only by interpreters, Xi explained to Trump \u201cwhy he was basically building concentration camps\u201d in the northwest Chinese province. According to Bolton, the American interpreter said that Trump expressed that Xi should go ahead with building them. Bolton writes that he was told by National Security Council official Matt Pottinger that Trump had said something similar during a 2017 trip to China.<\/p>\n Bolton\u2019s book also provides highlights on other foreign policy decisions, including how poorly Trump handled his 2018 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the book, declared Trump\u2019s strategy on North Korea as having \u201czero probability of success\u201d while Bolton says the president saw the denuclearization effort in the Korean Peninsula merely as a \u201can exercise in publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n The book includes examples of disdain from Trump\u2019s closest advisers speaking behind the president\u2019s back. According to the book, after Trump completed a phone call with South Korean President Moon Jae-In ahead of the 2018 Singapore summit with North Korea, Pompeo told Bolton he was \u201chaving a cardiac arrest\u201d as he listened to the conversation, while Bolton described it as a \u201cnear death experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Bolton also alleges that Trump offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Chinese telecom firm Huawei if it would help in the trade deal with Beijing.<\/p>\n \u201cThese and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency,\u201d Bolton writes in his op-ed. \u201cHad Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump\u2019s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.\u201d<\/p>\n Criticism of Bolton<\/strong><\/p>\n Bolton is a conservative who has worked in Republican administrations including those of Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush. In his tenure as W. Bush\u2019s United Nations ambassador as well as Trump\u2019s adviser, Bolton advocated for a hardline foreign policy, supported the Iraq war and favored military action against rogue states such as North Korea and Iran.<\/p>\n While other former Trump administration officials have spoken against the president, Bolton\u2019s account is one of the most scathing to come from someone who was once part of Trump\u2019s closest circle of foreign policy advisers.<\/p>\n