Thread by @karolcummins

Bolton says that the House in its impeachment inquiry should have investigated Trump not just for pressuring UKR to incriminate his domestic foes but for a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons. nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

“Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey.”

#Huawei #ZTE #Halkbank

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

#TurkeyGate

https://twitter.com/karolcummins/status/1184244160984825856?s=21

In concession, Trump will help China's ZTE 'get back into business'
reuters.com/article/us-usa…

The Chinese government-backed $500 million loan for the Indonesia project had been signed.

"It has nothing to do with Trump," Trump Jr. said. "Obviously he (Tanoesoedibjo) has got a large development, and the two have nothing to do with each other."
usnews.com/news/business/…

Chinese government-backed firms are slated to work on parts of two large developments — in Dubai and Indonesia — that will include Trump-branded properties.
washingtonpost.com/politics/as-ta…

“The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

📌Bolton also adds a striking new allegation by saying that Trump overtly linked trade negotiations to his own political fortunes by asking President Xi to buy a lot of American agricultural products to help him win farm states in this year’s election.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

📌Trump, Bolton writes, 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.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

📌Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia, Mr. Bolton writes.

📌He came closer to withdrawing the United States from NATO than previously known.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Even top advisers who position themselves as unswervingly loyal mock him behind his back. During Trump’s 2018 meeting with KJU, Pompeo slipped Bolton a note disparaging Trump, saying, “He is so full of shit.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

A month later, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Pompeo dismissed the Trump’s North Korea diplomacy, declaring that there was “zero probability of success.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Intelligence briefings with Trump were a waste of time “since much of the time was spent listening to Trump, rather than Trump listening to the briefers.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Trump likes pitting staff members against one another, at one point telling Mr. Bolton that former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had once referred to Nikki R. Haley, then the ambassador to the United Nations, by a sexist obscenity —

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

📌Senate Republicans blocked calling Mr. Bolton as a witness even after The Times reported in January that his then-unpublished book confirmed that Trump linked the suspended security aid to his insistence that Ukraine investigate his political rivals.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

The @SenateGOP went on to acquit Mr. Trump almost entirely along party lines.

But Mr. Bolton engendered great anger among critics of the president for not making his account public before now.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

The book confirms House testimony that Mr. Bolton was wary all along of the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine and that Mr. Trump explicitly linked the security aid to investigations involving Mr. Biden and Hillary Clinton.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

On Aug. 20, Trump “said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-inv’n materials related to Clinton & Biden had been turned over.”

Mr. Bolton writes that he, Pompeo & Esper tried 8 to 10 times to get Trump to release the aid.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

📌Bolton said House DEMs should have also looked at how Trump was willing to intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor Mr. Xi.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Trump stunningly, turned the conversation with XI to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Bolton reported the incidents to Barr and Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel.

They should have been investigated by the House, he said, and at the very least suggested abuses of a president’s duty to put the nation’s interests ahead of his own.

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

“A president may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guide of national interest

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

“Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests,” he adds, then “there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had been perpetrated.”

nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/…

Clearly @AmbJohnBolton placed sales of his book over the National security of our country. He could have revealed any or all of this after he resigned. He choose to stay silent.

Bolton is just another #TrumpAdmGrifter

@threadreaderapp unroll please and thank you.