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Former top US official Bolton to bring out book, defying White House

This article is more than 12 months old

WASHINGTON: Former national security adviser John Bolton will defy the White House and publish a book that suggests US President Donald Trump committed impeachable offences beyond Ukraine, his publisher said Friday.

Mr Trump earlier this year had warned that Mr Bolton should not publish his book while the president is still in the White House, whose lawyers have reportedly contended that large portions of the material in the memoir is classified.

But publisher Simon and Schuster said it would go ahead and publish The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir on June 23, teasing in a press release: "This is the book Donald Trump doesn't want you to read."

"I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn't driven by re-election calculations," Mr Bolton writes in the book, according to the release.

The publisher said Mr Bolton will document wrongdoing by Mr Trump that goes beyond his pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden - which triggered his impeachment by the Democratic-led House of Representatives.

Mr Bolton "argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Mr Trump's Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy", the publisher said.

Mr Bolton will describe Mr Trump's "inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process", it said. Mr Bolton, a veteran Republican policymaker known for his hawkish views, left in September after disagreeing with Mr Trump's diplomatic outreach to adversaries, notably North Korea.

The memoir will renew questions on why Mr Bolton, if he believed Mr Trump had committed such offences, did not testify as part of his impeachment and instead waited to sell his book. - AFP

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