The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

First, it narrowed the scope of the impeachment inquiry dramatically and provided no opportunity to explore Trump’s ham-handed involvement in other matters—criminal and civil, international and domestic—that should not properly be subject to manipulation by a President for personal reasons (political, economic, or any other). This is not to say that I have any doubts about a President’s Article II authority over the Department of Justice. But it does mean that a President’s Constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” means that the laws must be applied evenhandedly. A President may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guise of national interest. Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests (whether political or economic), but on the broader pattern of his behavior—including his pressure campaigns involving Halkbank, ZTE, and Huawei among others—there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that “high crimes and misdemeanors” had been perpetrated. In fact, I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.

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