The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

ZTE had committed massive violations of both our Iran and our North Korea sanctions, had been successfully prosecuted by Justice, and was operating under a criminal-consent decree7 monitoring and regulating its behavior. A court-appointed master overseeing the decree had just reported extensive violations, which could result in significant additional fines, as well as cutting ZTE off from the US market, which Ross was prepared to do. I didn’t consider this a trade issue but a law-enforcement matter. If ZTE had been a US company, we would have toasted them, and I saw no reason to hold back because ZTE was Chinese. Nonetheless, the State Department worried about offending China, so Ross wanted to know how to proceed the next day with a planned Commerce Department announcement.

Trump was unhappy with Ross’s decision and wanted to modify the hefty penalties he had proposed, with Mnuchin quickly agreeing. I was appalled, because by rescinding what Ross had already told China, Trump was undercutting him (which, as I learned shortly, was standard operating procedure for Trump) and forgiving ZTE’s unacceptable criminal behavior. Even so, Trump decided to call Xi Jinping, just hours before announcing that the US was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. Trump began by complaining about China’s trade practices, which he believed were so unfair, and said China needed to buy more US agricultural products. Xi actually raised ZTE first, and Trump called our actions very strong, even harsh. He said he had told Ross to work something out for China. Xi replied that if that were done, he would owe Trump a favor and Trump immediately responded he was doing this because of Xi. I was stunned by the unreciprocated nature of the concession, and because, as Ross told me later, ZTE had almost been destroyed by the penalties imposed. Reversing the decision would be inexplicable. This was policy by personal whim and impulse.

said I didn’t think any of the numbers being bandied about were the real issues. This wasn’t a trade dispute but a conflict of systems. The “structural issues” we raised with China weren’t trade tactics but a fundamentally different approach to organizing economic life. Negotiations should begin on these issues, so we could see whether there was any real chance China was serious about changing its ways (and I certainly didn’t believe it was). Kudlow agreed, taking a position more distant from Mnuchin than ever before, and Mnuchin didn’t react well. During the ensuing debate, I suggested we bar all Chinese goods and services from America if they were based in whole or in part on stolen intellectual property. “I like that idea,” said Trump, but of course Mnuchin didn’t. I said we would need additional legislative authority, but it was a battle worth fighting. Trump said again (several times in fact) that he liked the idea, so I thought at least some progress had been made. The briefing ended minutes later, at four forty-five.

Trump also asked Xi to reduce China’s exports of fentanyl, a deadly opioid causing havoc across America and a politically explosive issue, which Xi agreed to do (but then later did essentially nothing). Trump also asked for the release of Victor and Cynthia Liu, whom China was holding hostage because of allegations against their father, Liu Changming, who was in the US. Xi said, as if this were the answer, that the Lius were dual US-Chinese citizens. Trump shrugged his shoulders disdainfully and dropped the issue. So much for protecting US citizens. The Chinese probably hoped the dinner would go on all night.

With the press gone, Xi said this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. He said that some (unnamed) political figures in the United States were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war, this time between China and the United States. Whether Xi meant to finger the Democrats, or some of us sitting on the US side of the table, I don’t know, but Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.

Trump made matters worse on several occasions by implying that Huawei also could be simply another US bargaining chip in the trade negotiations, ignoring both the significance of the criminal case and also the far larger threat Huawei posed to the security of fifth-generation (or 5G) telecom systems worldwide. This is what the black-hole-of-trade phenomenon did in twisting all other issues around Trump’s fascination with a big trade deal. Huawei posed enormous national-security issues, many of which we could only allude to in public statements. The idea that this was merely trade bait both discouraged and confused our friends. Mnuchin fretted constantly about how this or that prosecution for hacking or other cybercrimes would have a negative effect on the trade negotiations, which Trump sometimes bought and sometimes didn’t. At one point, he said to Mnuchin, “Steve, the Chinese see fear in your eyes. That’s why I don’t want you negotiating with them.” Those were the good days. There were more that weren’t.

We ran into similar obstacles internationally as we sought to alert our allies to Huawei’s threat and that of other state-controlled Chinese firms. We also spread awareness of how treacherous China’s Belt and Road Initiative was, based on “debt diplomacy,” luring countries with seemingly advantageous credit terms, then getting them hooked financially, from which Third World nations especially couldn’t extract themselves. In December 2018, at the Heritage Foundation, I laid out the Administration’s Africa strategy, stressing our concern for the unfair advantage China had taken of many African nations. In Europe, many countries had done so much business with Huawei, they found it hard to disentangle themselves. With the UK, for example, the discussions were very difficult, although attitudes changed significantly once Johnson became Prime Minister and installed a new Cabinet. But even then, it was hard slogging because of the high level of dependence on Huawei that Britain had built up over an extended period.These legitimate worries should have led us to focus on rapidly getting new entrants into 5G markets, not how we would mitigate the consequences of continuing to patronize Huawei.

During Trump’s May state visit, Abe had said China is the largest strategic challenge in the mid- to long-term. They completely disregard established rules and order. Their attempts to change the status quo unilaterally in the East and South China Seas are unacceptable. Abe encouraged Trump to maintain US-Japan unity against China, and much more. This was how to conduct a strategic dialogue with a close ally. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison was also clear-eyed, seeing Huawei pretty much the way I did, and New Zealand also took a surprisingly but gratifyingly hard line.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle told me as far back as October 2018, after a trip to Hong Kong, that China had become increasingly aggressive, kidnapping from Hong Kong businessmen who had somehow crossed Beijing, many of whom were simply never heard from again. The business community was too scared to say much or get it reported in the international press. Quayle believed one reason China was prepared to behave so cavalierly was that Hong Kong’s economy now amounted to only 2 percent of China’s total, whereas at the time of the handover from Great Britain in 1997, it amounted to 20 percent.

In November, however, pro-democracy advocates turned local council elections into a referendum on the city’s future. Stunningly, HongKongpeople voted in unprecedented numbers, overwhelming pro-Beijing candidates, and completely reversed the political coloration of the local councils.

China was also busily repressing ethnic minorities—in Tibet, for example—as it had been doing for decades. Beijing’s repression of the Uighurs also proceeded apace. Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christmas dinner why we were considering sanctioning China because of its treatment of the Uighurs, a non–Han Chinese, largely Muslim people, who lived primarily in China’s northwest Xinjiang Province. Ross had warned me that morning Trump didn’t want sanctions because of the China trade negotiations. The issue of the Uighurs had been wending its way through the NSC process, but it was not yet ready for decision. It only got worse. At the opening dinner of the Osaka G20 meeting, with only interpreters present, Xi explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do. Pottinger told me Trump said something very similar during the 2017 trip to China, which meant we could cross repression of the Uighurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued.26 Religious repression in China was also not on Trump’s agenda; whether it was the Catholic Church or Falun Gong, it didn’t register. That was not where Pence, Pompeo, and I were, but it was Trump’s call.

Trump was particularly dyspeptic about Taiwan, having listened to Wall Street financiers who had gotten rich off mainland China investments. Although it came in several variations, one of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the Resolute desk and say, “This is China.” So much for American commitments and obligations to another democratic ally. Taiwan very much wanted a free-trade agreement with the US, which generated absolutely no interest that I could discern. China pounded away during my tenure, sensing weakness at the top, doubtless having heard from those Wall Street financial types. Yang Jiechi, in our November 8 meeting, gave me the customary lecture about Taiwan’s being the most important and sensitive issue in US-China relations. Remarkably, he said that we had a mutual stake in preventing Taiwanese independence as if we were co-conspirators, which I certainly didn’t believe. He talked endlessly about the “one China” policy, which he mischaracterized in Beijing’s favor.

With 2020 being a presidential election year, it was inevitable that Trump’s performance in this global health emergency would become a campaign issue, which it did almost immediately. And there was plenty to criticize, starting with the Administration’s early, relentless assertion that the disease was “contained” and would have little or no economic effect. Larry Kudlow, Chairman of the National Economic Council, said, on February 25, “We have contained this. I won’t say [it’s] airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.”32 Market reactions to these kinds of assertions were decidedly negative, which may finally have woken the White House up to the seriousness of the problem. And obviously, in addition to the humanitarian implications, the economic and business consequences would certainly continue to reverberate through the November elections and beyond. Trump’s reflex effort to talk his way out of anything, however, even a public-health crisis, only undercut his and the nation’s credibility, with his statements looking more like political damage control than responsible public-health advice. One particularly egregious example was a news report that the Administration tried to classify certain public-health information regarding the United States on the spurious excuse that China was involved.33 Of course China was involved, which is a reason to disseminate the information broadly, not restrict it. This, Trump was reluctant to do throughout the crisis, for fear of advers...

The reorganized directorates performed perfectly well, as I had fully expected. In real-world terms, the renewed Ebola outbreaks in the eastern Congo and nearby areas in 2018–19 were handled with great skill across the interagency process.36 Apart from continual monitoring, my personal interventions were limited to helping ensure adequate security and protection for Centers for Disease Control experts to access the affected Congo regions. Trump himself told Kupperman, when OMB raised budgetary objections to sending the teams, to have OMB make available whatever funds would be needed “to keep Ebola out of the US.” In addition, the Directorate oversaw the creation of a fully revised national biodefense strategy in 2018,37 and also produced two important presidential decisions, one (following on the new strategy) on support for biodefense in September, 2018,38 and one on modernizing influenza vaccines in September, 2019.39 These and other less publicly visible achievements are the hallmark of an effectively functioning interagency process.

The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.40 Thus, responding to the coronavirus, the NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty. And fundamentally, after all the human and economic costs of the coronavirus are reckoned, there are two chilling conclusions. First, we must do everything possible to ensure that China, and its contemporaneous disinformation campaign about the origin of the virus, will not succeed in proving that the Big Lie technique is alive and well in the twenty-first century. We must tell the truth about China’s behavior, which Trump was consistently loath to do, or we will suffer the consequences and the risk well into the future. Second, after decades in which biological (and chemical) warfare have been belittled as “the poor man’s nuclear weapon”—given what the likes of North Korea, Iran, and others have just seen happen worldwide—we must treat these other two weapons of mass destruction with at least the vigilance we now afford to nuclear weapons. And, in fact, by combing the biosecurity directorate with the Directorate responsible for weapons of mass destruction, I intended to do j...

Reagan’s point was that when you held firm, you got better deals than when you gave in.

While we were milling around, Trump asked me how we could be “sanctioning the economy of a country that’s seven thousand miles away.” I answered, “Because they are building nuclear weapons and missiles that can kill Americans.” “That’s a good point,” he agreed. We walked over to where Pompeo was standing, and Trump said, “I just asked John why we were sanctioning seven thousand miles away, and he had a very good answer: because they could blow up the world.”

This fit with his notion, unshakeable after countless discussions, that we were in, say, South Korea, to defend them. We were not there for “collective defense” or “mutual security” or any of that complex international stuff. We were defending Germany, or defending Japan, or defending Estonia, whatever, and they should pay for it. Moreover, as any good businessperson would tell you, we should make a profit from defending all these countries, in which the US had no particular interest (“Why are we in all these countries?” Trump would ask), or at least we should get a better bargaining strategy, starting at the outset of negotiations each time the host-country support agreements came up for renewal.

After more North Korea discussions, Trump asked how relations were with Japan. We all saw the increasing difficulties between Tokyo and Seoul, which would worsen rapidly in the next few months. Moon was trying to upend a 1965 treaty between the two countries. That treaty aimed, certainly in Japan’s view, to put an end to the animosities created by Japan’s colonial rule over Korea from 1905 to 1945, especially World War II’s hardships and the well-known “comfort women” issue. Moon said that history should not interfere with the future of relationships, but, from time to time, Japan made it an issue. Of course, it wasn’t Japan that was raising the history, but Moon, for his own purposes. My view was that, like other South Korean political leaders, Moon tried to make Japan an issue when times at home were difficult.

Kim Jong Un and North Korea tested 3 short range missiles over the last number of days. These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when we shook hands. There may be a United Nations violation, but… …Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust, there is far too much for North Korea to gain – the potential as a Country, under Kim Jong Un’s leadership, is unlimited. Also, there is far too much to lose. I may be wrong, but I believe that… …Chairman Kim has a great and beautiful vision for his country, and only the United States, with me as President, can make that vision come true. He will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to, and he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump! That was our North Korea policy.

Moreover, both Mnuchin’s arguments amounted to saying that the threat of sanctions was more effective than the application of sanctions, which was manifestly incorrect.

right way to impose sanctions is to do so swiftly and unexpectedly; make them broad and comprehensive, not piecemeal; and enforce them rigorously, using military assets to interdict illicit commerce if necessary. This was the formula the Bush 41 Administration used immediately after Saddam Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, with devastating effect. But even there, it was not sufficient. Although badly weakened, Iraq still smuggled out enough oil to survive, thus ultimately necessitating military force to oust it from Kuwait. But for a road map on imposing sanctions swiftly and comprehensively, UN Security Council Resolutions 661, enumerating the sanctions on Iraq, and 665, authorizing the use of military force to carry them out, remain key documents. Instead, especially under Obama, sanctions began to be applied as if they were individual judicial decisions against specific entities and individuals. This approach did exist under certain sanctions authorities in US law, intended for more limited purposes than dealing with massive threats like Iraq in 1990–91, but it was a mistake to expand the practice. Instead, legislation should have been amended where necessary to allow for sweeping sanctions without quasi-prosecutorial investigations and quasi-judicial determinations at the Treasury Department.

The risk of undermining the US dollar as the global reserve currency was theoretically important, but that risk existed independent of the effects of US sanctions. Other currencies already had major roles in international financial matters, and the advent of the euro created an even more significant competitor. On the other hand, some countries pegged their currencies to the dollar, and economists spoke of national economies’ being “dollarized,” sometimes by official decision and sometimes just through real-world practice. Trends were hardly all in one direction. In fact, the “threat” to the dollar’s status turned into simply one more Mnuchin argument when he was anxious about imposing sanctions and risking media criticism. As Wilbur Ross said in the context of Venezuela, Mnuchin often seemed more protective of US firms that were sleeping with the enemy than of accomplishing the mission we were trying to achieve. It is rare indeed in the hard, chaotic world of international affairs when the threat of action is actually more powerful than the action itself. If America’s economic swords had been sharper during the Trump Administration, we would have accomplished much more.

One important loophole for Iran was the oil waivers granted to eight countries (Taiwan, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Greece, and Turkey) when renewed sanctions took effect in November 2018, six months after US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, noted above. Taiwan, Greece, and Italy quickly halted purchases of Iranian oil, so not renewing their waivers was a given. State’s bureaucrats found endless reasons to extend the other waivers, as “clientitis” took hold. “But India is so important,” or “Japan is so important,” said officials, arguing the interests of “their” countries rather than the US interests at stake.6 One of the worst cases involved India, which, like the others, was buying Iranian oil at prices well below the global market because Iran was so desperate to make sales.7 India complained it would be disadvantaged not only because of having to find new suppliers, but also because the new sources would insist on prevailing market prices! India’s making this argument was understandable, but it was incomprehensible that US bureaucrats echoed it sympathetically.

I left for the previously scheduled meeting in the Tank. Shanahan and Dunford wanted a strategic discussion on Iran, which I said was fine, but we were now looking at “an attack on the global oil market” we simply couldn’t ignore. The Quds Force was continuing up the escalation ladder, and why not? They certainly weren’t seeing the United States do anything in response. Nonetheless, we slogged through the usual Pentagon array of charts (called “place mats” because of the size of the paper used). They had lines and columns and arrows, all very artistic. Finally, I said our various policy priorities with Iran (nuclear, terrorism, conventional military aggression) could not be delinked, and we particularly could not separate Iran’s nuclear program from all its other malign behavior. This was precisely Obama’s mistake on the nuclear deal. Why return to his failed analytical framework? I argued again that, whether or not it was our declared “end state” (a favored bureaucratic term), there would be no “new” Iran deal and no “deterrence” established as long as Iran’s current regime remained. You could like it or not, but basing policy on some other reality would not get us to any “end state” we sought. Whether this discussion was productive or not, or whether it would just lead to another set of elaborate place mats, remained to be seen.

The point was to convince Iran it would face costs far higher than it was imposing on us or our friends if it used force. As of now, Iran had paid no costs at all. Even Obama at least threatened attacking Iran, although the seriousness of his statements was open to question.38 That, unfortunately, was what we were still doing: not pursuing options. We agreed merely to increase personnel making defensive preparations for US forces in the region, and we had trouble even issuing a press release to that effect by day’s end.

The next day, in a Time magazine interview, Trump described the initial and most recent attacks as “very minor.”39 I wondered why I bothered coming to the West Wing every morning. This practically invited something more serious. Just as a starter on Wednesday, rockets were fired in Basra, likely by Shia militia groups, aimed at the local headquarters of three foreign oil companies (Exxon, Shell, and Eni), causing several injuries but no fatalities.40 The response of the Iraqi government was to announce a ban on attacks from its territory against foreign states.41 It would have been nice if Iraq treated Iranian military forces and Shia surrogates on its territory at least equally to the US, but that was impossible given Iran’s dominance in Baghdad. We refused to acknowledge this reality, even as it continued to expand, as it had been doing for several years. And a DC that morning produced no interest in responding to the rocket attacks. The IRGC’s new commander, Hossein Salami, and its Quds Force commander, Qassim Soleimani, had to be smiling broadly.

There were three significant aspects about the decision just reached: (1) we were hitting functioning military targets, as explained above, not merely symbolic ones; (2) we were hitting inside Iran, crossing an Iranian red line, and were certainly going to test their repeated assertions that such an attack would be met by a full-scale response; and (3) we were hitting targets likely entailing casualties, which question we had confronted, Trump having heard that the attacks he had ordered meant dead Iranians (and, possibly, dead Russians). After the fact, there were alternative theories about Trump’s stunning decision to cancel the strike, but I believe strongly that Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he made the decision.

On Sunday morning, Trump and Britain’s Boris Johnson had breakfast, their first meeting since Johnson had become Prime Minister. Inevitably, the subject of Iraq came up, and Johnson engaged in some friendly teasing by saying, “I agree with the President that ‘democracy building’ was a mistake. Are we done with the regime change era, John?” I laughed and said, “Well, that’s a sensitive subject,” but made the point that pursuing “regime change” in certain circumstances was not the same thing as “democracy promotion” or “nation building.” Out of nowhere, Trump then said, “John’s done a good job. When he walks into a room, Xi Jinping and these others take notice,” which caused general merriment, as he turned to me, smiled, and said, “It’s true.” That was nice. While it lasted.

Trump out of meeting with Zarif. Netanyahu and Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer were also calling me, so I asked Pompeo to tell them I felt like the Light Brigade, outcome TBD. On Trump’s floor, I found Mulvaney and Kushner. Kushner was on the phone to David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel, telling Friedman that he was not going to allow Netanyahu’s call to go through. (Now we knew who was stopping all those calls to Trump!) When he hung up, Kushner explained he had stopped this and an earlier effort by Netanyahu because he didn’t think it was appropriate for a foreign leader to talk to Trump about whom he should speak to.

knew what I wanted to achieve in Afghanistan, and Trump’s other senior advisors shared my two objectives. Tied for first, they were: (1) preventing the potential resurgence of ISIS and al-Qaeda, and their attendant threats of terrorist attacks against America; and (2) remaining vigilant against the nuclear-weapons programs in Iran on the west and Pakistan on the east. This was the counterterrorism platform1 we wanted to pursue in early 2019.2 The hard part was getting Trump to agree and then stick with his decision.

Zalmay Khalilzad’s ongoing negotiations with the Taliban constituted another layer of complexity. Pompeo believed he was carrying out Trump’s mandate to negotiate a deal lowering the US troop presence to zero. I thought this was clearly bad policy. In theory, the US government opposed any such arrangement unless it was “conditions based,” meaning we would go to zero only if: (1) there were no terrorist activities in the country; (2) ISIS and al-Qaeda were barred from establishing operating bases; and (3) we had adequate means of verification. I thought this was touchingly naïve, much like the Pentagon’s views on arms control: we make a deal with some gang of miscreants, and they adhere to it. How nice.

Dunford further explained the need to maintain a counterterrorism presence for the broader region. As he launched into his charts and slides to show how our ongoing Afghan operations would be staffed and costed, Trump said, “There are still a lot of people there,” but fortunately he went on to say, “Having no one is dangerous, because they [the terrorists] tend to form there and knock down buildings,” which was exactly the point. Trump repeated one of his hobbyhorses, namely that it was cheaper to rebuild the World Trade Center than to fight in Afghanistan, inconveniently ignoring the loss of life in the 9/11 attacks, not just the cost of rebuilding. It also ignored the reality that a Trump withdrawal, followed by a terrorist attack, would be devastating politically. Dunford pressed on, saying our military pressure kept the terrorists from reconstituting and was like an insurance policy. He had no precise timetable in mind, but the Pentagon would allow the diplomatic reconciliation process to set the timing. I thought we were approaching dangerous ground here, again opening the question of whether we should be in Afghanistan at all. The discussion meandered around for a while, with Trump asking me why we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan but not Venezuela, which at least showed everyone else in the room what he really wanted to

In the midst of these difficulties, we received one piece of extraordinarily good news, on April 12, when the International Criminal Court’s “pretrial chamber” handed down a thirty-two-page opinion rejecting its prosecutor’s request to open an investigation into the conduct of US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan. I spoke several times with former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, our Ambassador to the Netherlands, where the court was located, in the Hague, and found him nearly as surprised as I that we had succeeded in stopping this miscarriage of justice. I had long opposed the court,3 and I had given a speech early in my tenure to the Federalist Society in Washington about why the Administration rejected it as a matter of principle, and the steps we were prepared to take against the court if it presumed to target American citizens.4 I called Trump at nine fifteen a.m. to tell him about the decision, and he said, “Put out something powerful,” which I was delighted to do.

The meeting began shortly after three p.m., with Pompeo saying, “We are not quite done with the Taliban,” but then laying out the broad terms of a deal that sounded almost done. This description contrasted sharply with what Pompeo had said to me on the phone earlier that day. Trump asked questions, especially about one provision for an exchange of prisoners and hostages between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which in numerical terms looked a lot more favorable to the Taliban than to us. Trump didn’t like that at all. Then Trump began riffing about Afghan President Ghani and his elaborate house in Dubai, which we knew from actual research Ghani didn’t own. But no matter, because Pompeo pointed out the reality that Ghani was now President and controlled the government’s armed forces. Completely predictably, Trump asked, “Who pays them?” Esper, new to this movie script, promptly responded, “We do,” thereby launching Trump into the riff about how Mattis always said, “These soldiers are fighting bravely for their country,” until Trump asked who paid for them, and found out the total cost (including equipment and other supplies) was about $6.5 billion annually. “They are the most highly paid soldiers in the world,” Trump concluded. Then he was off on “green-on-blue” attacks, where Afghan government soldiers attacked US forces: “We teach them how to shoot, and then they take the weapons and say, ‘Oh, thank you, sir,’ and then kill our guys.” Then we were off to the Afghan...

“Would you sign it, John?” Trump then asked, and I said, “I would not, Mr. President.” I explained again my reasons why Trump should just go down to 8,600 service members, plus associated and coalition forces, if that’s what he wanted to do, and then wait and await further developments, such as the Afghan elections. There was no way to trust the Taliban and no enforcement mechanism. This was not a New York real estate deal. Khalilzad then explained this was the deal Trump had said he wanted. Esper said he thought I made a lot of good points, but the Defense Department wanted the deal, because after all it was “conditions based.” Trump posed what was always his key question: “How bad will this deal make me look? The Democrats would trash a great agreement.” Esper suggested bringing in Hill leaders for consultations. Trump asked, “Is this agreement salable?” and I said I didn’t think so, largely because, in my view, the Taliban wouldn’t adhere to it and everyone knew

Hecker called at one thirty to finish our conversation and reported that at a just-concluded meeting involving representatives of the Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, Russia had said the Ukrainian ships failed to give the required notice for transiting a temporary exclusion zone (permissible under international law for purposes such as military exercises), which seemed ridiculous. In Merkel’s conversation with Poroshenko, he said he had modified the martial-law bill pending in the Rada, reducing the period affected from sixty to thirty days, thus permitting the March elections to proceed as scheduled. This was progress, although martial law would help Poroshenko politically, and it would bear watching to see if the thirty-day period was later extended (it was not). Merkel was speaking to Putin in about an hour to urge de-escalation on both sides, specifically asking that Putin engage directly with Poroshenko.

I landed in Brazil, at about eleven p.m. Rio time. Trump called again to say he would do the bilateral if Putin would announce, when it ended, that he was releasing the ships and crews, thus in effect giving Trump credit for springing them. Considering the time differences, I did not call Moscow. Moreover, changing our position at this point would make Trump look desperate for the meeting, which he probably was. The next morning, I spoke with our Moscow Deputy Chief of Mission Anthony Godfrey (Huntsman being away), who said the Russians were charging the crews with trespassing, not a good sign, to say the least. Patrushev reached me as I was in the air to Buenos Aires, saying he had a message he wanted me to convey from Putin to Trump, namely, that because of the “illegal trespassing” of Russia’s border, a criminal case, including investigative actions, has been launched. The Russians claimed that, judging by documents they had seized from the ships and the information provided by the crews, it was a military provocation, an operation guided and controlled by the Ukraine security services. Therefore, said Patrushev, in accordance with Russian legal procedures, the formalities were now under way, so releasing the ships and crews was impossible.6 He said he was convinced we would do the same, analogizing Moscow’s actions to Trump’s policies along the Mexican border.

Ukraine remained basically quiet as we awaited their first round of presidential elections on March 31, but other matters began coming to the fore. Trump had complained about our Ambassador Yovanovitch, for some time, noting to me on March 21 during a telephone call covering a number of subjects that she was “bad-mouthing us like crazy” and that her only concern was LGBTQ matters. “She is saying bad shit about me and about you,” he added, saying he wanted her fired “today.” I said I would call Pompeo, who was in the Middle East; I tried several times to reach him but didn’t because of meeting schedules and time-zone differences. After Principals Committees later that afternoon, I pulled Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan aside to convey Trump’s direction, so he could inform Pompeo. Sullivan knew Trump wanted Yovanovitch fired, so he understood that this repetition of Trump’s instruction was serious.

Trump called me to the Oval, but I found him in his small dining room with Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow (another of his private attorneys), obviously enjoying discussing the reaction to Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation. At this meeting, I learned Giuliani was the source of the stories about Yovanovitch, who he said was being protected by a Deputy Assistant Secretary in State’s European bureau, George Kent (I don’t think Giuliani knew Kent’s job title accurately; Pompeo clarified it for me later). Trump again said Yovanovitch should be fired immediately. I reached Pompeo by phone in the late afternoon to relay this latest news, now with the update that it came from Giuliani. Pompeo said he had spoken with Giuliani before, and there were no facts supporting any of his allegations, although Pompeo didn’t doubt that, like 90 percent of the Foreign Service, Yovanovitch probably voted for Clinton. He said she was trying to reduce corruption in Ukraine and may well have been going after some of Giuliani’s clients. Pompeo said he would call Giuliani again and then speak to Trump. The next morning, I called Trump about several matters and asked if he and Pompeo had spoken on Yovanovitch. They had not, but he repeated he was “tired of her bad-mouthing us” and her saying he would be impeached and the like. “Really bad,” said Trump. I called Pompeo about nine forty-five a.m. to report this conversation. He again protested that Giuliani’s allegations simply weren’t true an...

A couple of days later, April 23, I was called to the Oval to find Trump and Mulvaney on the phone, discussing Yovanovitch again with Giuliani, who was still pressing for her removal. He had spun Trump up with the “news” that she had spoken to President-Elect Zelensky to tell him Trump himself wanted certain investigations by Ukrainian prosecutors stopped. In Giuliani’s mind, Yovanovitch was protecting Hillary Clinton, whose campaign was purportedly the subject of Ukrainian criminal investigations, and there was some connection with Joe Biden’s son Hunter in there as well. Giuliani was delivering what was all third-or-fourth-degree hearsay; he offered no evidence on the call for his allegations. I said I had spoken with Pompeo on Yovanovitch and would check with him again. Trump couldn’t believe Pompeo hadn’t fired Yovanovitch yet, and that’s what he wanted, no ifs, ands, or buts. Trump said I should find out immediately from Pompeo what was happening, and I should call Zelensky to make it clear Yovanovitch did not speak for the Administration. Of course, since we didn’t really know what she had said, it was unclear what I should tell Zelensky to ignore.

briefed Eisenberg on this latest Yovanovitch development. A bit later, Mulvaney came to my office with Cipollone and Emmet Flood, a White House Counsel’s office attorney handling the Mueller investigation. I raised with them something I had asked about before, with either Cipollone or Eisenberg: whether Giuliani had ethical problems under the lawyers’ Code of Professional Responsibility for using one attorney-client relationship to advance the interests of another client, a dynamic that I thought might be at work in his dealings on behalf of Trump. I said I thought it was an ethical violation to do so, but I was in the minority; the others did agree it was “slimy.” So much for legal ethics.

Specifically, however, I also wanted to brief him on Trump’s penchant to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked, such as the criminal cases of Halkbank, ZTE, potentially Huawei, and who knew what else. Barr said he was very worried about the appearances Trump was creating, especially his remarks on Halkbank to Erdogan in Buenos Aires at the G20 meeting, what he said to Xi Jinping on ZTE, and other exchanges. I had had essentially this same conversation with Cipollone and Eisenberg for about an hour on January 22, shortly after Cipollone replaced McGahn on December 10, 2018. At that time, we discussed Halkbank, ZTE, a Turkish agent Israel had arrested (and Trump had gotten released during his July stay at Turnberry in calls with Netanyahu), the question whether to lift US sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (which was done in early April), Huawei, the implications for China trade negotiations, Trump’s personal legal travails, and other issues. I had no doubt of the President’s constitutional authority to prioritize among conflicting Executive Branch responsibilities, such as law enforcement and national security. Nonetheless, in the febrile Washington atmosphere caused by the Russia collusion allegations, it wasn’t hard to see politically how all this would be characterized. Whether there was anything even more troubling beneath the surface, none of us knew. Cipollone had not had any previous briefing on these issues, and he was plainly stunned...

On May 8, the Ukraine pace began to quicken. At about one forty-five p.m., Trump called me to the Oval, where he was meeting with Giuliani, Mulvaney, Cipollone, and perhaps others. The subject was Ukraine, and Giuliani’s desire to meet with President-Elect Zelensky to discuss his country’s investigation of either Hillary Clinton’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign or something having to do with Hunter Biden and the 2020 election, or maybe both. In the various commentaries I heard on these subjects, they always seemed intermingled and confused, one reason I did not pay them much heed. Even after they became public, I could barely separate the strands of the multiple conspiracy theories at work. Trump was clear I was to call Zelensky and make sure Giuliani got his meeting in Kiev next week. Giuliani swore he had no clients involved, which I found hard to believe, but I still hoped to avoid getting into this mess. Yovanovitch’s firing was already in the press, and a Giuliani visit to Ukraine would certainly find its way there as well. Giuliani also said he was after an official at State, last name of Kent, who Giuliani said was in league with George Soros and very hostile to Trump. I had heard the name before in connection with Yovanovitch but didn’t know him from Adam.

The issue of Giuliani’s trip to Ukraine percolated for a few days without a clear decision. Cipollone and Eisenberg came to see me on May 10, with Yovanovitch’s firing having received more media coverage (although the mainstream press showed little interest), and with Giuliani on his own generating a fair amount of attention. In a New York Times interview published in print that morning,8 he was quoted as saying, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do… There’s nothing illegal about it… Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy—I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.” The three of us agreed Giuliani couldn’t be allowed to go to Ukraine, but the brouhaha also made it uncertain who from the Trump Administration could attend Zelensky’s inauguration, given the adverse publicity it might receive.

In fact, Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration brought the further surprise that he was calling Poroshenko’s bluff and scheduling early parliamentary elections. No exact date was set, but the voting was expected to be at some point in July. It also became increasingly plain, not only to me but to others as well, including Fiona Hill, the NSC Senior Director for Europe and Russia, that Trump completely accepted Giuliani’s line that the “Russia collusion” narrative, invented by domestic US political adversaries, had been run through Ukraine. In other words, Trump was buying the idea that Ukraine was actually responsible for carrying out Moscow’s efforts to hack US elections. That clearly meant we wouldn’t be doing anything nice for Ukraine any time soon, no matter how much it might help us forestall further Russian advances there.

“How stupid is this?” Trump asked. “Germany doesn’t spend on neighboring countries. Angela says, ‘We don’t spend because it’s a neighboring country.’10 John, do you agree on Ukraine?” I didn’t answer directly, worrying about what had suddenly made Trump pay attention to this particular military assistance. Instead, I suggested that Esper raise all these questions about NATO and Ukraine burden-sharing at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting scheduled in the coming days. This was likely the first time I heard security assistance to Ukraine called into question, but the real issue was how Trump found out about it, and who came up with the idea to use it as leverage against Zelensky and his new government. I never learned the answers to these questions, but Mulvaney, in his continuing capacity as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, was certainly one possible source. The key point that I carried away from this conversation was that the Ukraine security assistance was at risk of being swallowed by the Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories.

Danylyuk was surprised and uncomfortable that I didn’t readily agree to a Zelensky visit, which came from the incessant boosterism of the others in the meeting, but I wasn’t about to explain to foreigners that the three of them were driving outside their lanes. The more I resisted, the more Sondland pushed, getting into Giuliani territory I saw as out of bounds.

I told her to get into a meeting Sondland held on his own in the Ward Room with the Ukrainians and others from the meeting in my office. I was stunned at the simplemindedness of pressing for a face-to-face Trump-Zelensky meeting where the “Giuliani issues” could be resolved, an approach it appeared Mulvaney shared from his frequent meetings with Sondland. I told her to take this whole matter to the White House Counsel’s office; she quoted me accurately as saying, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” I thought the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior. Was it a factor in my later resignation? Yes, but as one of many “straws” that contributed to my departure. Earlier, Hill testified, I had called Giuliani “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” which still sounds right today. Perry and Sondland in particular kept pushing, including on Danylyuk to press me at least for a Trump-Zelensky phone call before the Rada elections. I continued to fend them off, fearing the call could backfire.

The “call record” of the Trump-Zelensky discussion, which I listened to, as is customary, compiled by NSC notetakers, now released publicly, is not a “transcript” like that produced by a court reporter of testimony in trial or in depositions. Soon after arriving at the White House, on May 18, 2018, I met with Eisenberg to discuss the process for creating these call records and how it had evolved. We decided to leave things as they were, to avoid recording as final, under the Presidential Records Act, things that shouldn’t be kept for posterity. Until the Ukraine controversy broke, I was not aware we ever deviated from that policy, including “storage” procedures. Nor, at the time, did I think Trump’s comments in the call reflected any major change in direction; the linkage of the military assistance with the Giuliani fantasies was already baked in. The call was not the keystone for me, but simply another brick in the wall. These are my recollections of what was important in the conversation, not from the call record.