Monday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed John Bolton for the publication and contents of his soon-to-be-released tell-all book.
Based on excerpts, Pompeo said the book included “falsehoods” and threatened national security in the same ways that so-called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had.
“[I] t’s both sad and dangerous. I read the book in its entirety, but the excerpts I’ve seen, there’s a lot of falsehoods,” he said. “There’s a lot of lies contained there. Indeed the cover itself, it said in the room, he was in the room — isn’t even completely true. The president and others, myself included, had to cut him out of meetings because he was leaking or he’d twist things, or he’d lie. It was — it was a really difficult situation where John Bolton thought he was more important than the president of the United States and the American people.”
“And the core story, Sean, that somehow the president took action so he could get re-elected, that his foreign policy was driven by that, he didn’t kill Qassem Soleimani to get re-elected,” Pompeo continued. “He isn’t pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party to get re-elected. He didn’t get out of the Paris Climate Accord to get re-elected. He did this to secure the basic rights and security for every American. This president’s foreign policy is something that John Bolton should have been proud of, and instead, he stepped away in a way that fundamentally misrepresents what we’ve done.
“And, frankly, the information he has released puts criminal liability squarely on him,” he added. “We all saw what’s happened when people leak classified information like Edward Snowden. What John Bolton did here is not dissimilar from that, and while we will leave open for the Justice Department to take its action, this kind of information getting out, it presents real risk and real harm to the United States of America.”
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