Bolton Defends House Impeachment Witnesses Who Spoke Out Against Trump, Slams Claims of Disloyalty as ‘Exact Reverse of the Truth’
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Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton offered a strong endorsement of those government officials who testified against President Donald Trump in the House impeachment inquiry.
Bolton’s comments were not a public rebuke of the president, however, instead they came during a private dinner in Austin, Texas, according to reporting by NBC affiliate KXAN, Bolton was the keynote speaker at the dinner sponsored by an investment management company, and was there to discuss the foreign policy challenges facing the Trump administration.
“All of them acted in the best interest of the country as they saw it and consistent to what they thought our policies were,” Bolton reportedly said during the Q&A portion of the event, referring to the House impeachment witnesses who implicated the Trump White House in a quid pro quo scheme to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into the president’s potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden.
“The idea that somehow testifying to what you think is true is destructive to the system of government we have — I think, is very nearly the reverse — the exact reverse of the truth,” Bolton noted, to applause. Government officials, he added, should “feel they’re able to speak their minds without retribution.”
Bolton has famously offered to testify in Trump’s Senate trial and, after revelations from his forthcoming book leaked this past weekend, he would be expected to say that Trump personally directed the withholding of Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine to try to compel the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to comply with his demand for a probe into Biden and his son, Hunter. But based on a late-night announcement by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander that he will oppose calling witnesses, the prospect that the Senate will call Bolton to publicly testify to his conversations with Trump became very slim.
