Former national security advisor John Bolton published a scathing op-ed Monday morning, after his home and office was raided by the FBI on Friday.
Bolton briefly served as NSA in the first Trump administration, from April 2018 until Trump fired him on September 10, 2019. He later turned into a staunch Trump critic, and has written a “tell-all” book, titled, “The Room Where It Happened.”
The first Trump administration had reportedly opened an investigation in 2020 about “Bolton’s alleged use of a private email to send classified national security documents to his wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in September 2019.”
The Biden administration closed the investigation in 2021, but now the new Trump administration has reopened it.
In his op-ed on Monday, Bolton didn’t address the allegations against himself, but instead tried to direct the focus to President Trump’s efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and claimed Trump is doing it all wrong.
The op-ed, published in the Washington Examiner, begins:
President Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy is no more coherent today than it was last Friday when his administration executed search warrants against my home and office. Collapsing in confusion, haste, and the absence of any discernible meeting of the minds among Ukraine, Russia, several European countries, and America, Trump’s negotiations may be in their last throes, along with his Nobel Peace Prize campaign.
The administration has tried to camouflage its disarray behind social media posts, such as Trump comparing his finger-pointing at Russian President Vladimir Putin to then-Vice President Richard Nixon during the famous kitchen debate with Nikita Khrushchev. Why Trump wants to be compared to the only president who resigned in disgrace is unclear. Trump also asserted Ukraine can only win by attacking inside Russia, even as his own Defense Department blocked Kyiv from missile strikes doing just that, reversing the Biden administration’s policy. Russia’s attack on a U.S.-owned factory in Ukraine, which Moscow hasn’t acknowledged, only highlighted the disarray.
Russia’s unprovoked 2022 aggression against Ukraine is painfully straightforward, and the views of the combatants are completely contradictory. Kyiv believes it is fighting for its freedom and independence, while Moscow seeks to recreate the old Russian Empire. These positions leave no middle ground. The two parties may agree to a ceasefire, but the threat of renewed hostilities will continue as long as the Kremlin maintains its imperialist goals. Trump has called the conflict “senseless” and “ridiculous,” but Kyiv and Moscow, for widely varying but strongly held reasons, vehemently disagree.
Trump’s furious pace trying to move an extraordinarily complex conflict to resolution over the past two weeks was one of several significant mistakes. It inevitably made reaching an agreement on a ceasefire, let alone a full-scale peace agreement, more difficult. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in Moscow on Aug. 8 and immediately returned to Washington to inform Trump, among other things, that Putin wished to meet with him. Two days later, Trump announced the requested summit (soon thereafter revealed to be held in Alaska) would occur one week later, on Aug. 15. Trump noted that he wished the meeting could have been held even sooner, but it is almost surely unprecedented in modern history that a summit between leaders of two major powers on such a contentious issue has been arranged so expeditiously.
READ MORE from the Washington Examiner.
Follow us on X (Formerly Twitter.)
The DML News App: www.X.com/DMLNewsApp
