Why did Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton leave the White House?
The idea that Bolton left because he disagreed with Trump's handling of Iran or North Korea did not make much sense to me because he spent a great deal of time within Trump's regime while those respective shitshows were ongoing.
It seemed at if something more recent occurred that prompted Bolton to resign this summer and now we may know what that was.
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton asked White House aide Fiona Hill to use her testimony to House investigators to help distance him from the Ukraine pressure campaign, the New York Times reported.
According to two people familiar with the Monday testimony who spoke to the Times, Bolton asked Hill to tell the House committees that he was “not part of whatever drug deal (Gordon) Sondland and (Mick) Mulvaney are cooking up.” Hill testified that Bolton was so bothered by the pressure campaign efforts in the White House that he asked Hill to alert White House lawyers about the dealings.
The New York Times also reported that Bolton confronted U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland before Trump's infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
If that's true, in indicates that Bolton and the whole gang knew what was coming.
This does not make Bolton a hero, of course. The world is more complicated than that especially in the Trump era populated by new villains that make the villains of yesteryear look washed up.