John Bolton book claims Trump ‘pleaded with China’s President Xi to help him win 2020 election’
PRESIDENT Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 election, according to former national security adviser John Bolton.
Trump suggested to Xi during the 2019 G20 Summit in Japan that China could have an impact on the election by buying more US agricultural products, according to an excerpt from Bolton's memoir, published .
Bolton claims that Trump 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. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise," Bolton writes.
The memoir - which doesn't come out until June 23 but is already a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon - portrays Trump as an "erratic" and "stunningly uninformed" president, according to the extract published on Wednesday.
Bolton also claims that the House should have looked further into Trump in their impeachment investigation.
The ex-White House adviser claims that pressuring the Ukraine to help dig up dirt on Trump's Democratic rival Joe Biden, was just one of a handful of instances where the president attempted to make questionable deals for political gain, .
Last night , telling the Wall Street Journal: "He is a liar ... everybody in the White House hated John Bolton.”
He also called Bolton a "a washed-up guy" who broke the law" in a separate interview with Fox.
The book and the claims made in it are especially shocking considering Bolton is a conservative who has spent decades working in Republican administrations.
The Justice Department on Tuesday attempted to block to book's publication, claiming that it contains classified material. The suit claims Bolton breached an NDA contract with the White House.
"The United States is not seeking to censor any legitimate aspect of Defendant's manuscript; it merely seeks an order requiring Defendant to complete the prepublication review process and to take all steps necessary to ensure that only a manuscript that has been officially authorized through that process - and is thus free of classified information - is disseminated publicly," the filing reads.
Bolton's attorney denies that the book contains any classified material, and claims that it underwent a strict review process, according to the Washington Post.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump called the book "highly inappropriate" and said that Bolton would have "a very strong criminal problem" if the book is published.
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Trump gave Bolton the boot from his national security adviser position last fall.
The two apparently had disputes over how to handle foreign policy changes in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.
The new book is expected to shed some light on how the president really dealt with foreign countries.
In his Monday comments, Trump questioned his former security adviser's credibility.
"If he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he's broken the law and I would think you would have criminal problems. I hope so," Trump said. "If this guy is writing things about conversations or about anything - and maybe he is not telling the truth. He's been known not to tell the truth, a lot."