BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Consider Jeff Sessions unimpressed with former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton’s decision to write a book and allow for the possibility to have it leaked through the press in a way that could sway the proceeding of the Senate impeachment trial currently underway.
In an on-location interview given to Breitbart News that aired on Tuesday on Huntsville, AL radio’s WVNN, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, addressed impeachment and the impact a claim reportedly made by Bolton in his forthcoming book according to The New York Times on Sunday that President Donald Trump tied aide to inquiries requested of the Ukrainian president.
Sessions scoffed at Democrat impeachment efforts and cited Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz’s argument that even if true, Trump’s alleged gesture was not an impeachable offense.
“It does appear that the Democrats are moving an agenda designed not to do an objective impeachment inquiry, but to actually advance a political agenda to hurt the president, to hurt his chances to be reelected, to impeach him if they can,” he said on WVNN’s The Jeff Poor Show. But if not, to hurt him politically. I believe that Dershowitz’s argument that these charges are not the kind of thing you should impeach a president for, even if they are true – that’s what I believed all along. You mean the president can’t push back or negotiate with a country on various issues if you think he might not should have, it’s still not impeachable. Presidents do things all the time that we disagree with that are not impeachable, and they have a chance to conduct oversight, and bring it out and complain about it. I feel strongly about that.”
The former Alabama U.S. Senator hammered Bolton for his book as well. The alleged claim made by Bolton could prolong the impeachment trial by giving a group of Republicans Senators justification for requesting witness participation in the trial.
Sessions argued Bolton was violating a “confidential relationship” with his reported book and suggested that Bolton may not respect the idea that the president sets foreign policy, not members of Cabinet departments.
“I also think that John Bolton ought not to be writing a book before the ink is dry on his termination as National Security Advisor, and leaking it out to the press,” Sessions said. “National Security Advisor is almost like his White House counsel, like his Attorney General, like his Secretary of Defense, where you have confidential relationships, and you share things with them. And you shouldn’t be blabbing it out there. You have to protect the president’s ability to talk to his staff in a way that is honorable. I feel strongly about that. I don’t think they should be writing these books as soon as they get out of the White House. I just don’t.”
“Bolton told me, he told the American people that he understood it is his responsibility to help the president execute the president’s policies – not John Bolton’s policies,” he said. “He wasn’t elected to be the president of the United States and set foreign policy in the United States. Under our law, only one person has been elected to do that. He is accountable to the public for his own policies, whether they work or not – he has to answer for it. These members of the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security group do not get to set policy in this country.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.