House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped John Bolton on Thursday, saying that the former national security advisor had chosen personal loyalty over patriotism.
Responding to Bolton’s written assertions that blamed House Democrats for failing to hold President Donald Trump sufficiently accountable, Pelosi issued a terse reminder that House Democrats led the impeachment effort in the fall of 2019 and that Bolton himself had refused to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
“He was so arrogant in terms of the House when we were engaged in the impeachment,” Pelosi said during her weekly press conference Thursday.
Pelosi continued to criticize Bolton’s concerns regarding the president as ingenuine and exaggerated, saying that he should have come in front of Congress instead of saving his fears for his book, The Hill reported.
During the impeachment hearings, Bolton declined to voluntarily testify in front of the House, though he was never subpoenaed.
Bolton said Trump was “not fit for office” and did not have the “competence to carry out the job” in an interview with ABC News set to air this Sunday, much to the ire of the Speaker.
“President Trump is clearly ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to be the president of the United States. That doesn’t seem to matter to the Republicans in the United States Senate. It didn’t seem to matter to John Bolton,” Pelosi said. “He chose loyalty over patriotism. And so he’s going to make money off of his book, I guess.” (RELATED: Trump Responds To Bolton Book Allegations: ‘What A Dope!’
Pelosi continued, saying that Bolton threw the country under the bus to sell a book.
Pelosi also left open the possibility of Bolton returning to Capitol Hill to testify once his book is released on June 23, though she said that the decision would ultimately be made collectively by her and the heads of relevant congressional committees.
“One thing is for sure: the American people have the right to know. Our oversight will always continue. Whether that’s by subpoena or some other way, I’ll discuss that with the chairs of the committees.”
Asked if she was going to purchase Bolton’s book, “The Room Where it Happened,” Pelosi said that she did not plan on it.
“I don’t want to spend any money for a book that was a substitute for testifying before Congress about the well-being of the American people,” she said.
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