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Leak intrigue
On Sept. 9, 2019, Trump told Bolton in the Oval Office that the press coverage concerning his canceled Camp David meeting with Taliban and Afghan leaders was highly unfair, according to the memoir.
Days earlier, Trump tweeted that he had canceled the planned secret meeting after the Taliban claimed responsibility for a car bombing that killed a U.S. soldier, a Romanian soldier, and 10 civilians in Kabul earlier that week.
"Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday," Trump tweeted. "They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled [sic] the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?"
Bolton's memoir charges that Trump's tweets were making him look bad -- but that the president sought to blame others.
"He was furious he was being portrayed as a fool, not that he put it that way," Bolton writes. "He said, 'A lot of people don't like you. They say you're a leaker and not a team player.' I wasn't about to let that go. I said I'd been subject to a campaign of negative leaks against me over the past several months, which I would be happy to describe in detail, and I'd also be happy to tell him who I thought the leaks were coming from. (Mostly, I believed the leaks were being directed by Pompeo and Mulvaney.)"
Bolton said he told Trump that there were no "favorable stories" about Bolton in the New York Times or Washington Post, which "often revealed who was doing the leaking."
Separately, Bolton confirms reports that Trump didn't want notes taken from his private conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018. That summit attracted international scrutiny, as Trump suggested Russia might be right -- and U.S. intelligence might be wrong -- about Russian election interference efforts.
"In fact, the US interpreter told Fiona Hill and Joe Wang later that Putin had talked for 90 percent of the time (excluding translation); she also said Trump had told her not to take any notes, so she could only debrief us from her unaided memory," Bolton writes. "It was clear, said Trump, that Putin 'wants out' of Syria, and that he liked Netanyahu. Trump also said Putin didn't seem to care much one way or the other about our leaving the Iran nuclear deal, although he did say Russia would stay in." Trump told Putin he had 'no choice' but to be 'tough' on China."
"These people should be executed, they are scumbags," Trump separately told Bolton concerning leakers, according to the memoir. One of Trump's "favorite legal gambits," Bolton writes, was "that the Justice Department arrest the reporters, force them to serve time in jail, and then demand they disclose their sources. Only then would the leaks stop."
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Posted by Erin Burnett to Trang Ánh Nam at June 18, 2020 at 7:05 PM
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