Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said on “The View” on Wednesday that he would not have “any fear” of testifying under oath about what he claims to have witnessed in the White House, despite his failure to do so during the House’s impeachment inquiry.
After co-host Joy Behar berated his failure to testify and said he could “redeem himself in my eyes” by testifying in the future, Bolton said “I don’t have any fear whatever of testifying under oath.” He added, “I have set forth in this book as accurately as I can what I saw and heard.”
The comments come after Bolton’s explosive memoir “The Room Where it Happened” was released this week. In the book, Bolton alleges that President Trump solicited China’s leader Xi Jinping for help to win reelection in 2020, among other allegations.
Bolton did not testify during the House impeachment inquiry, despite hinting that he had damning testimony about the president at the time.
In the interview with “The View” host the former Trump official said that he did not agree with the way that the impeachment inquiry was conducted, adding that he was under no obligation to testify at the time.
“I felt very strongly and still do that the way the impeachment process was carried out was needlessly partisan and doomed to failure. I didn’t march to the same drummer as the Democratic House leadership and I’m not required to,” he added.
In the book, Bolton also criticizes House leadership for its handling of impeachment, calling its focus on the withholding of aid to Ukraine overly narrow and rushed.
“My view was if you’re going to get this information out, it had to be done in the right way, and the way they were proceeding I think would have guaranteed much of what I said in the book simply would have been ignored.”
Bolton defended himself in similar terms earlier this week, telling ABC’s Martha Raddatz, “I don’t think it would have made a difference because of the way the Democrats pursued the impeachment process in the House.”