They are terrified...

Trump claims Bolton book is ‘classified national security’

The president also suggested that his former national security adviser would have entangled the U.S. in multiple major world conflicts.

By QUINT FORGEY

President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that his conversations with John Bolton are entirely classified, setting up a new line of defense against potentially devastating testimony from the former national security adviser should he be called as a witness in the ongoing Senate impeachment trial.

Trump also suggested that Bolton, long regarded as a hawk within GOP foreign policy and national security circles, would have entangled the U.S. in multiple major world conflicts if not for the president’s refusal to heed his counsel.

Bolton, Trump tweeted, was “fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now.” The president claimed his former aide had “‘begged’ me for a non-Senate approved job” and then “IMMEDIATELY [wrote] a nasty & untrue book.”

“All Classified National Security. Who would do this?” Trump concluded.

Bolton’s forthcoming White House memoir threw Trump’s impeachment trial into disarray after The New York Times reported over the weekend that an unpublished manuscript described the president telling his then-national security adviser that military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on the launch of probes into his domestic political rivals.

Those alleged revelations, which Bolton has not confirmed and Trump has denied, have forced Republican senators to confront intensified calls for testimony from Bolton, but the White House has warned them not to cave to Democratic demands for more witnesses.

The president’s invocation Wednesday of “Classified National Security” could bolster the argument from some GOP lawmakers that additional witnesses would tie the impeachment trial up in weeks-long court battles. The House, in crafting its articles of impeachment, opted not to call some witnesses because of legal fights over White House claims of executive privilege, another sticking point for Republicans who do not support further testimony.

Bolton’s attorney said he turned over a hard copy of the draft to the National Security Council late last month to ensure it did not inadvertently share classified information. An NSC spokesperson said the book remains under “pre-publication review” and that “no White House personnel outside NSC have reviewed the manuscript.”

Trump signaled earlier this month that he would invoke executive privilege if the Senate subpoenas Bolton, telling Fox News: “I think you have to for the sake of the office.”

The president again cited national security concerns with regard to witness testimony by administration officials when he appeared two weeks later at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit.

“When [Bolton] knows my thoughts on certain people and other governments, and we’re talking about massive trade deals and war and peace and all these different things that we talk about, that’s really a very important national security problem,” Trump told reporters in Davos, Switzerland.

Nearly 6 in 10 voters oppose the president’s invoking executive privilege to block new testimony in his trial, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

Trump’s morning Twitter barrage against Bolton followed another post just after midnight, when the president insisted that his former national security adviser had not expressed any concerns about the administration’s Ukraine policy during his White House tenure.

“Why didn’t John Bolton complain about this ‘nonsense’ a long time ago, when he was very publicly terminated,” Trump tweeted. “He said, not that it matters, NOTHING!”

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, similarly attacked Bolton in an interview on “CBS This Morning” that aired Wednesday, calling him a “backstabber” and a “swamp character.”

“He never said to me, ‘I’ve got a problem with what you are doing in Ukraine.’ Never once, never winked, never sent me a little note,” Giuliani said. “He is a personal friend, I thought. So here’s the only conclusion I can come to, and it’s a harsh one. And I feel very bad about it. He’s a backstabber.”

House impeachment witnesses testified before Congress that Giuliani led efforts to secure Ukrainian probes that would oust the U.S. ambassador to the Eastern European nation and be politically advantageous for Trump.

The witnesses in the House inquiry also characterized Bolton as being uncomfortable with Giuliani’s work in Ukraine, testifying that he described the former New York mayor as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Responding to that alleged insult Wednesday, Giuliani told CBS: “If he came up to me and said, ‘Rudy, you’re a grenade that will blow up in each other’s face,’ I would say, ‘I would never have the opportunity because you’re an atomic bomb.’”

Giuliani also echoed the Trump’s assessment that “Bolton should not testify if the president feels that it is executive privilege material,” remarking that he found Bolton’s “testimony about the president pretty close to incredible. I can’t imagine that the president of the United States said that to him.”