Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum pressed former National Security Adviser John Bolton for publishing information in his book while refusing to testify during President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Bolton famously refused to testify during the impeachment process, yet published “The Room Where It Happened” this week despite attempts by the Trump administration to use legal measures to stop it.
During a lengthy Wednesday night interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” the Fox News anchor asked if the decision constituted “a shirking of duty.”
WATCH:
“No, I think you’ve mischaracterized it,” Bolton responded. “Just because the House Democrats have decided they were gonna proceed in a certain way doesn’t mean I have to follow them. Nancy Pelosi is not my drummer, and I think the course of action that the House Democrats took guaranteed that the impeachment process would run into a ditch, which it did.”
The former national security adviser noted that, without Republican support, impeachment had no chance of succeeding, especially since most Republicans felt that everything the president was accused of “did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”
“I disagree with that, but it shows that my testimony in the Senate would not have made any difference given that legal approach,” he said.
“Why not take that opportunity to testify, and to say look, you guys are doing this all wrong,” MacCallum pressed. “I also want to talk about several other countries that I feel there was malpractice in on this presidency. Why not take advantage of that because it looks as you know … it just looks like you were saving it to make money off the book.”
Bolton insisted that if he were trying to make money he “wouldn’t have joined the government to begin with.”
“It’s worth mentioning that you wouldn’t have had the substance for this book if you had not joined the government,” MacCallum said later. (RELATED: Richard Grenell Spars With CNN Anchor: John Bolton ‘Made A Whole Bunch Of Stuff Up’ To Get A ‘Big Book Deal’)
“I wouldn’t have had this grief either,” Bolton joked.