John Bolton: I Entered The Trump Administration Aware Of The Problems

When former National Security Advisor John Bolton voted for Donald Trump in 2016 he decided to roll the dice on an unknown instead of backing a Democrat. Amb. Bolton made a similar gamble when he joined the Trump administration thinking he could help guide what he knew was a problematic approach to foreign policy. His new book “The Room Where It Happened” is out now. #StephenAtHome #JohnBolton #BoltonBook

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>> WHAT– WHAT– WHAT I THOUGHT IN 2016 WAS WE AT LEAST HAVE TO
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TRY IT OUT.
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AND SO I VOTE FOR TRUMP.
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HAVING EXPERIENCED 17 MONTHS OF WORKING WITH HIM, I CAN’T IN
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GOOD CONSCIENCE DO THAT AGAIN.
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AND THAT’S WHY I’M NOT GOING TO VOTE FOR HIM, AND I’M NOT GOING
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TO VOTE FORED BY GREN.
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>> Stephen: I GUESS WHAT’S EXASPERATING IS THERE IS
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ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DONALD TRUMP HAS DONE THAT IS SURPRISING TO
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ME.
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MY RULE IS EVERYTHING THAT YOU THINK ABOUT DONALD TRUMP IS
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PROBABLY TRUE.
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BECAUSE HE’S NOT DEEP ENOUGH TO GET YOUR SOCKS WET IN.
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HE’S INCREDIBLY READABLE.
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THAT’S WHY WHEN HE RAN CASINOS, THE HOUSE LOST.
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THERE’S NOTHING TO LEARN ABOUT HIM.
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THAT’S WHY HE’S ESSENTIALLY A BORING PERSON.
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HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW BEFOREHAND THAT HE WAS JUST HOLLOW?
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>> BECAUSE I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT WAS THAT BAD.

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AND I KNOW OTHER PEOPLE SAY THEY SAW IT FROM THE BEGINNING —
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>> Stephen: BUT YOU’RE AN INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATOR.
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HOW COULD YOU BE NAIVE?
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YOU’VE DEALT WITH THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
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>> YOU’VE REALLY INSULTED ME NOW BY CALLING ME NAIVE.

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LOOK, I THOUGHT IT WAS POSSIBLE TO WORK WITH SOMEBODY.
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I THOUGHT SURELY THEY WOULD WANT TO LEARN ABOUT THE COMPLEXITYES
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OF ARMS CONTROL NEGOTIATIONS AND THAT SORT OF THING.
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AND AS I DETAIL IN THE BOOK, THAT TURNED OUT NOT TO BE TRUE.
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>> Stephen: AMBASSADOR, WE HAVE TO TAKE A QUICK BREAK, BUT

The White House vs. John Bolton

Officials are attempting to use national security as a pretext to prevent the publication of his memoir.

President Trump doesn’t want John Bolton to publish his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” It was supposed to come out in March, but Simon & Schuster was twice forced to push the publication date back more than three months, to June 23, while the manuscript underwent “prepublication review” by the National Security Council (NSC).

The purpose of prepublication review is to protect national-security secrets. Regulations disallow its use “to prevent embarrassment to a person.” Yet that’s how the White House has used the process in this case. The effort violates those regulations and Mr. Bolton’s First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Mr. Bolton, who was Mr. Trump’s national security adviser for 18 months, took care as he wrote to avoid revealing anything that might be classified. He instructed me, as his lawyer, to submit the manuscript to Ellen Knight, the NSC’s senior director for prepublication review of materials written by NSC personnel.

I sent Ms. Knight the manuscript on Dec. 30, days after the House had impeached the president and amid speculation that the Senate would subpoena Mr. Bolton to testify. Because the manuscript includes a chapter about Ukraine—the subject of the impeachment—the risk that Mr. Trump and his aides would commandeer prepublication review was obvious.

I therefore emphasized to Ms. Knight that in submitting his manuscript Mr. Bolton was relying on the regulations expressly limiting prepublication review to career government officials regularly charged with that responsibility. Those rules prohibit officials from classifying information “to prevent embarrassment to a person” or to “prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security.” Ms. Knight assured me the review’s sole purpose would be to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

What followed was perhaps the most extensive and intensive prepublication review in NSC history. Mr. Bolton and Ms. Knight spent almost four months going through the nearly 500-page manuscript four times, often line by line.

Round one began on Jan. 23, as the impeachment trial was under way. Ms. Knight wrote to me that Mr. Bolton’s manuscript contained “significant amounts of classified information” and that she would provide “detailed guidance regarding next steps that should enable you to revise the manuscript and move forward as expeditiously as possible.”

A few days later Vanity Fair reported that “the president is out for revenge against his adversaries.” The article stated that the president “has an enemies list,” that “Bolton is at the top of the list,” and that the “campaign against Bolton” included Ms. Knight’s Jan. 23 letter. It also reported that the president “wants Bolton to be criminally investigated.”

On Feb. 7, two days after Mr. Trump’s acquittal, Ms. Knight suggested that “to further the iterative process, it would be most efficient for me to meet with [Mr. Bolton] to review each instance of classified information in detail.” Meantime, the White House had acknowledged that NSC staff briefed White House counsel Pat Cipollone about the book while Mr. Cipollone was leading the impeachment defense.

Mr. Bolton and Ms. Knight met on Feb. 21. That same day the Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had “directly weighed in” on the prepublication review, “telling his staff that he views John Bolton as ‘a traitor,’ that everything he uttered to the departed aide about national security is classified and that he will seek to block the book’s publication.” The Post also reported that Mr. Trump vowed to a group of television news anchors: “We’re going to try and block publication of the book.” The president added, “After I leave office, he can do this.”

Mr. Bolton’s meeting with Ms. Knight lasted four hours. She later wrote that they “reviewed the preliminary results of three chapters in the draft manuscript in detail.” Mr. Bolton took five pages of handwritten notes as they discussed her specific concerns. Three days later, Ms. Knight wrote that the meeting had been “most productive,” and that “it would be most helpful to the process if we hold one or more following meetings . . . to discuss the remaining portions of the draft manuscript.”

They met three more times in the first week of March for more than 10 additional hours. They meticulously reviewed each of Ms. Knight’s concerns in the remaining 11 chapters, producing 34 more pages of handwritten notes. Following her guidance and his own notes, Mr. Bolton revised his manuscript. By March 9 he had resubmitted all 14 chapters to begin the second round of the iterative review.

Mr. Bolton didn’t hear from Ms. Knight again until Friday, March 27, when she wrote, “I appreciate your efforts to address the classification concerns in the latest draft version you submitted. Many of the changes are satisfactory. However, additional edits are required to ensure the protection of national security information. To assist in making the additional required changes, I will provide a list of required edits and language substitutions to guide you in this next stage of revising the draft.”

Her list amounted to 17 single-spaced pages of typed comments, questions, suggestions of specific alternative language, and citations to publicly available source material. Mr. Bolton worked through the weekend and responded in full on March 30, accepting the vast majority of Ms. Knight’s suggestions and proposing alternative solutions to others.

The third round of the review occurred in an April 13 phone conversation when Ms. Knight provided a much shorter list of remaining concerns after reviewing Mr. Bolton’s March 30 revisions. They agreed on these language changes, which were delivered to Ms. Knight on April 14.

During the April 13 call, Ms. Knight said she would review the full manuscript one more time, to recheck resolved issues and ensure she hadn’t overlooked anything. That final review resulted in two further phone calls, on April 21 and 24, in which she conveyed her final round of edits. Mr. Bolton promptly responded with the revisions by April 24. On April 27, after clarifying one previously discussed edit, Ms. Knight confirmed “that’s the last edit I really have to provide for you.” The lengthy, laborious process was over.

Yet when Mr. Bolton asked when he would receive the letter confirming the book was cleared, Ms. Knight cryptically replied that her “interaction” with unnamed others in the White House about the book had “been very delicate” and that there were “some internal process considerations to work through.” She thought the letter might be ready that afternoon but would “know more by the end of the day.” Six weeks later, Mr. Bolton has yet to receive a clearance letter. He hasn’t heard from Ms. Knight since May 7.

We did hear from the White House on June 8. John A. Eisenberg, the president’s deputy counsel for national security, asserted in a letter that Mr. Bolton’s manuscript contains classified information and that publishing the book would violate his nondisclosure agreements.

This last-minute allegation came after an intensive four-month review, after weeks of silence from the White House, and—as Mr. Eisenberg admits in his letter—after press reports alerted the White House that Mr. Bolton’s book would be published on June 23. This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public import. This attempt will not succeed, and Mr. Bolton’s book will be published June 23.

John Bolton | Full Address | Oxford Union

John Bolton gives his address on American Exceptionalism and why Obama is bad for America’s global position.
John Bolton begins by deconstructing President Obama’s 2nd Presidential inauguration speech saying that he deconstructed words by applying his own meaning to them much like most noted propagandaist of the 20th century. Implying that Obama is like Hitler.

He says that Obama has no interest in foreign policy, that he’s a isolationist who doesn’t mind that Americas role is declining in the global environment. He talks about the idea of ‘American Exceptionalism’ saying that it should not be viewed as an arrogant term and seeing as most Americans are descended from Europeans, that it’s Europe’s fault and not Americas.
Filmed on Tuesday 22nd January 2013

ABOUT JOHN BOLTON:
John Bolton served as Ambassador to the UN under President George W Bush and was described by The Economist as ‘the most controversial ambassador ever sent by America to the United Nations’.  During his tenure he was a vocal advocate for human rights, engineering the Security Council’s approval to send 22,500 UN peacekeepers to Darfur
He is a fierce critic of President Obama, arguing his foreign policy has endangered American Sovereignty.  He was one of Mitt Romney’s closest advisers during his 2012 presidential election campaign

ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY:
The Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.