Russiagate: Bolton at Bay

The story du jour has to be the fight between John Bolton, Donald Trump and the DOJ.  and as John Bolton attempts to get his book out and making money before the election. Apparently, within it he claims  Trump asked China to help him get reelected (AP), “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” Bolton wrote."

Deeply critical of the president and much of his senior team, Bolton wrote that because staff had served him so poorly, Trump “saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.” He added that while he was at the White House, Trump typically had only two intelligence briefings a week “and in most of those, he spoke at greater length than the briefers, often on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand.”

To be fair, the intelligence agencies were known to be hiding behind rocks to get him, and it seems fair they should hear about it. WSJ,  John Bolton: The Scandal of Trump’s China Policy "The president pleaded with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for domestic political help, subordinated national-security issues to his own re-election prospects and ignored Beijing’s human-rights abuses". And which former president had any effect on Beijing's human-rights abuses? Go ahead, I'll wait. AllahPundit at Hot Air, Bolton Book: Trump Encouraged China To Build Concentration Camps, Said Journalists Should Be Executed

I sense we’re about to hear anti-Trumpers screech in unison: “WHY DIDN’T BOLTON TESTIFY TO ALL OF THIS IN NOVEMBER WHEN THE HOUSE IMPEACHMENT TEAM ASKED HIM TO?”

Not me, though. Nothing would have changed if Bolton had testified. The Senate’s acquittal would have been even more embarrassing than it was, sure. But no one would have voted differently. Public opinion wouldn’t have moved much, if at all.

Remember all those intelligence people who said in public they know about collusion between Trump and Russia, but quietly, in secret House testimony told an entirely different story?  Yeah.  Anyway, there's just a whiff of the old AllahPundit in this one. Enough to make it readable.

LMT ONline, Joe Biden reacts to allegations against Trump in Bolton book, calls them 'morally repugnant'. You mean like snorting cocaine and impregnating strippers, and taking billions from the Ukrainians and Chinese level morally repugnant? I don't need the Biden crime family telling me what's moral. Sundance at CTH, John Bolton’s Dossier is Bananas – He’s Feeding Rabid Media Spider Monkeys…

Bolton’s frustration is crystal clear in his own words:

[…] The administration has “panda huggers” like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; confirmed free-traders like National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow; and China hawks like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, lead trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
After I became Trump’s national security adviser in April 2018, I had the most futile role of all: I wanted to fit China trade policy into a broader strategic framework. We had a good slogan, calling for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region. But a bumper sticker is not a strategy, and we struggled to avoid being sucked into the black hole of U.S.-China trade issues.

President Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is executed through the prism of using economics to achieve national security objectives.

This approach was so fundamentally foreign to Bolton that he couldn’t wrap his mind around how trade and economics could be used instead of dropping bombs.

Note Bolton’s own quote “the most futile role of all“. He was futile because his DC neocon view to achieve national security through military is so far away from the successful strategic deployment of economics that he cannot fathom it. Bolton had no way to open his mouth at the table because the economic team was speaking a foreign language.

WaPoo whines  Justice Department seeks emergency order to block publication of Bolton’s book. Prior restraint is a tough sell, though.

The government argued that if the court enjoins Bolton, then its order should also bind his publisher, Simon & Schuster.

In a 37-page filing Wednesday, the Justice Department wrote, “Disclosure of the manuscript will damage the national security of the United States,” adding, “To be clear: Defendant’s manuscript still contains classified information, as confirmed by some of the Government’s most senior national-security and intelligence officials.”

The filing included declarations by four U.S. officials, including Michael Ellis, the National Security Council’s new senior director for intelligence, who held up approval of Bolton’s manuscript.

Ellis said that passages of the manuscript “reasonably could be expected to cause damage, serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage to the United States,” and provided six examples for the judge’s private review.

Other testimonials were provided by Director of National Intelligence John L. Ratcliff; William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center; and Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency.

Ratcliffe said that the type of classified information in the passages “is the type of information that foreign adversaries of the United States seek to obtain, at great cost, through covert intelligence collection,” unauthorized disclosure of which could reveal, in some instances, the limits and capabilities of U.S. collection activities.

Town Hall, Nadler Accuses AG Barr of 'Abdicating' His Responsibility to Congress and sundance thinks Jerry Nadler / Lawfare Planning to Impeach AG Bill Barr?…. Sure, why not, just one more thing for the summer of 2020. I'm sure it will go about as far as Trump's impeachment.

In 2018/2019 the roadmap to impeach President Trump was clear; many denied its visibility until it was almost too late. In the past week several moves within DC present a roadmap to impeach AG Bill Barr. Could this be the DC defense against USAO John Durham’s findings surrounding the DC soft-coup effort? You decide.

 Nope; I'm not going to decide, I'll just wait and see.