WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Michael Pompeo denounced former national security adviser John Bolton as “a traitor who damaged America” by writing a memoir that was sharply critical of President Donald Trump.
Pompeo, in statement Thursday night, said he had not read the book, “but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods.”
“It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton’s final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people,” Pompeo added.
The secretary did not offer specifics. Among the many explosive charges leveled by Bolton was that Trump asked the Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help him win reelection by buying more farm products and that he sought to help a Turkish bank facing criminal charges in the U.S. as a favor to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bolton also asserted that Pompeo privately made disparaging remarks about the president and his foreign policy decisions.
The White House has dismissed the book as “lies” and sought an emergency injunction to prevent it from going on sale next week.
Excerpts of the book, “The Room Where It Happened,” were released Wednesday, a particularly awkward time for Pompeo — the same day that he met China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, for talks at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.
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