Ambassador John Bolton on the DOJ indicting Trump. “If you’re going after a former president, you’d better be very sure that you can prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It’s not an easy decision to make. At the same time, he is a former president. It’s important that we understand that; but you know what else he is, he’s a citizen of the United States. Just like you and I are, he has to follow the law.”
In an interview with WGIR’s Chris Ryan, former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor, John Bolton describes President Trump’s random pattern of keeping documents; reveals an example of Trump putting a classified document about Iran on Twitter; speculates on the possibility of President Trump being indicted; talks about recent military operations in Ukraine; explains recent violent developments in Iraq; and criticizes the Biden Administration’s reopening nuclear weapon negotiations with Iran.
John Bolton served as President Trump’s National Security Advisor, and he describes the former President’s random interest in documents during briefings. The fact that the fifteen boxes of documents which were handed over in January to the National Archives is a mixture of classified and unclassified documents is not surprising to Bolton.
Usually, a photograph or chart would catch his eye, and the President would ask to hold onto it. On one occasion, President Trump had asked to keep a photograph of an Iranian missile test which had exploded during a launch.
“Not more than an hour after that, he tweeted the picture out, kind of in a snarky tweet, saying we didn’t have anything to do with the failure of this launch, but let the Iranians worry about that.”
Ambassador Bolton feels that this incident illustrates that President Trump did not treat classified intelligence information with the level of sensitivity required.
The procedures which are normally followed to screen and to store classified documents when a President leaves office are described by Bolton. However, none of those procedures were followed by President Trump.
With the Department of Justice building its case and President Trump’s defense team making various complicated legal maneuvers, Ambassador Bolton speculates that if the former president could be indicted for obstruction of justice, that it would be after the 2022 elections.
“If you’re going after a former president, you’d better be very sure that you can prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It’s not an easy decision to make. At the same time, he is a former president. It’s important that we understand that; but you know what else he is, he’s a citizen of the United States. Just like you and I are, he has to follow the law.”
In the last segment of the interview, John Bolton shifts to foreign affairs and provides an update on the war in Ukraine, the increased violence in Iraq, and questions why we are renegotiating a nuclear arms treaty with Iran.
Ambassador Bolton believes that the tide of battle has shifted somewhat in Ukraine. Using new weapons provided us and other allies, the Ukrainian Army has gone on the offensive. However, Ambassador Bolton fears that this winter Putin will cut off the Nord Stream gas pipeline to divide the support for Ukraine among the NATO countries.
The increased violence, which has been occurring in Baghdad, is in Ambassador Bolton’s analysis an indication of the weakness of the Iraqi government which is caused interference from Iran.
Ambassador Bolton questions why the Biden Administration reopens the nuclear arms treaty with Iran. In his opinion, any deal with the Iranians is considered by them to be an opportunity to negotiate more concessions from the United States.
On a personal level, Bolton doesn’t understand why we are negotiating with a regime in Teheran which is plotting to assassinate Americans, like John Bolton, on and off American soil.