Friday on CNN’s “New Day,” former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney disputed some of the excerpts in former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s forthcoming tell-all book, “The Room Where It Happened.”
Mulvaney would not disclose details about portions of the book, which claim to be “classified” by the White House. However, he did argue Bolton’s account put “two factually true statements together” to make it look like President Donald Trump was “begging China for inappropriate help,” which he called “bizarre.”
Partial transcript as follows:
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Are the accounts in the book classified or false?
MULVANEY: Well, they could easily be both. You could have some things in there that are false.
And certainly, the excerpts that I’ve read — I’ve not seen the whole book. I’m not sure why I didn’t receive a courtesy copy of it. I understand I’m in there several times over. But the excerpts that I’ve seen have been factually false and it’s very likely or possible that the stuff that we’ve not seen is classified.
So those two things, I’ve seen some of the criticism —
SCIUTTO: But the classified —
MULVANEY: — in the press —
SCIUTTO: But the classified issues, you are saying, are therefore true. The ones that you’re claiming are classified are, therefore, true because they can’t be classified if they’re false.
MULVANEY: But let’s make one thing perfectly clear. I have not seen the book. I don’t know if you have or not.
But I’m not involved in the process of screening that book. That goes through the National Security Council that John Bolton used to run.
SCIUTTO: OK.
MULVANEY: So I think speculation —
SCIUTTO: Understood.
MULVANEY: — is people saying look, this is classified or not.
SCIUTTO: OK. Well, I have seen the book.
So let’s go through particular issues here and we’ll also look at what the NSC classification has said about it. So first, let’s start on China. Bolton says that the president pleaded
with Xi Jinping, of China, to help him win the election by buying agricultural products in swing states. We should note the classification process, it removed Bolton’s direct quotes of the president on that issue but left the account in. So is the account false or true of the president pleading with Xi to help in the election?
MULVANEY: I think it’s John’s — sort of, his whimsical spin on what actually happened at the meeting. I was at the meeting, Sec. Pompeo was at the meeting, Sec. Mnuchin was at the meeting.
And did the president talk about the Chinese buying more American soybeans and other agricultural products? Yes, he did that probably every time he talked to government — to President Xi. Would selling American agricultural products be good for the country and thus, good for the president’s reelection chances? Yes, they would be.
But to put those two factually true statements together to make it look like the president was begging China for inappropriate help is just — that’s bizarre, and I think that’s why you saw Pompeo respond the way that he did.
Importantly, Jim, you can’t ignore the fact that —
SCIUTTO: But is that — is that — you can call it bizarre —
MULVANEY: Sure.
SCIUTTO: — but he — Bolton says — and he took contemporaneous notes, by the way — that the president made that explicit connection and said if you buy it, it will help me win election. And that quote was removed in the classification process. So if the quote is false, why was it removed as classified?
MULVANEY: Go over again how this meeting takes place. There’s a bunch of us sitting on one side of a table on the American side, the Chinese on the other side. John Bolton is there. There was about a dozen people in the room, all right?
And if John Bolton is so upset about it now in his book — in fact, I guess he’s using this to help sell his books — he didn’t complain to me at the time, he didn’t complain to White House counsel at the time. And no one else at the meeting who was there — and again, there’s probably a dozen of us — remember anything that was inappropriate. It’s only John Bolton and it’s only now.
So you take that sort of circumstantial evidence to —
SCIUTTO: But it’s not only John Bolton — it’s not only John Bolton because —
MULVANEY: (INAUDIBLE).
SCIUTTO: No, but it’s not — that’s just not true because Ellen Knight, who did the classification review of the book, explicitly had him remove the quote of the president making that connection between buying products and helping him win election as classified.
If that’s classified, are you saying you were in the room — that the president did not make that connection? And if you say that, then why did the classification process remove the quote?
MULVANEY: The classification process is done by the National Security Council lawyers and I don’t understand and don’t pretend to understand it. I’m not involved in the process for classifying information as to what class — what is classified and what is not, and what level of classification it gets, all right?
What I’m telling you is that the remaining —
SCIUTTO: Yes. I’m just asking if the president —
MULVANEY: — people in the room —
SCIUTTO: Yes. I’m just asking if the president said it or not.
MULVANEY: No, I don’t remember the president saying that at all. And apparently, no one else in the room does, other than John Bolton.
SCIUTTO: OK, but we should note the classification process required that the quote be removed.
I want to ask you another question. Bolton says that the president gave Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of a foreign adversary, the OK to build concentration camps in northwestern China, which currently hold a million Muslims.
Again, that quote was removed in the classification process. Is it true or not because if it’s not true, why was it deemed classified?
MULVANEY: Yes, and I can — I can honestly tell you I don’t know anything about that conversation because I wasn’t in the room when that conversation took place and neither was John Bolton.
I read that excerpt. I think it was in “The Wall Street Journal” yesterday. And if you look at the details it says that the only people in the room at that time were the president, President Xi, and the interpreters. So, ironically, in a book called in “The Room Where It Happened,” John Bolton was not in the room where it happened.
Are the detention camps a terrible thing? Absolutely, they are. Is it something that the world should be paying more attention to? Absolutely, they should.
But to think that John Bolton somehow has this mysterious nefarious information about the President of the United States is just too fantastical to take credibly.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor