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      Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton says

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      Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRevelation from former national security adviser raises pressure on Trump as lawmakers investigate gaps in January 6 call logs John Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.Bolton’s intervention compounds Trump’s difficulties amid a billowing controversy relating to seven hours and 37 minutes that are missing in official call logs. The gap occurs in records made for 6 January last year – the day of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol.The Washington Post and CBS News disclosed on Tuesday that the House committee investigating the insurrection is looking into a “possible cover-up” of the White House records. Documents originally held by the National Archives and turned over to the committee earlier this year showed a gap in Trump’s phone calls spanning precisely the period when hundreds of his supporters stormed the Capitol building.Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfoldedRead moreThe news outlets, which obtained 11 pages of records including Trump’s official daily diary and a call log for the White House switchboard, reported that the House panel has begun an investigation into whether Trump used disposable “burner phones” to sidestep scrutiny.In a statement to the Post/CBS News, Trump said: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.”Not true, according to Bolton. In an interview with the Post/CBS News, the former national security adviser said that he recalled Trump “using the term ‘burner phones’ in several discussions and that Trump was aware of its meaning”.Bolton added that he and Trump had spoken “about how people have used ‘burner phones’ to avoid having their calls scrutinized,” according to Robert Costa, author of the Post/CBS News revelations along with Bob Woodward.At the heart of the January 6 committee investigation is whether Trump was directly involved in coordinating the breach of security at the Capitol on the day that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was to be certified by Congress. What Trump did, and whom he talked to, as the insurrection was unfolding is central to the inquiry.The call logs obtained by the committee show that Trump spoke to several close associates on the morning of January 6, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former senior adviser Steve Bannon. His daily diary shows an entry at 11.17 am for a phone call with “an unidentified person”, but after that the records fall silent.The next phone log is at 6.54pm when Trump asked the White House switchboard to put him through to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.In those intervening 457 minutes Trump supporters and white supremacist groups had broken through police barricades, forcing vice-president Mike Pence, who was overseeing the certification process, into hiding. A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the attack with more than 100 law enforcement officers injured.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsJohn BoltonnewsReuse this content More

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      Insurrection and inauguration: Joe Biden's new political era – video

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      Following the US Capitol riot, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to Washington DC for the week of Joe Biden’s inauguration to find a downtown area under what is essentially military occupation and a city coming to terms with the trauma of Donald Trump’s final days in office. 
      They speak to lifelong residents in the outer suburbs as well the US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who tells of her harrowing experience of the 6 January riot. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton rails against criticisms of the Republican administration’s handling of the domestic terrorism threat
      ‘I didn’t know if I would make it out that day’: Ilhan Omar on the terror of the Capitol attack More

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      'A disgrace': former aide John Bolton slams Donald Trump's early win claim – video

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      The former Trump US national security adviser John Bolton has said the president’s premature claim of victory in the election is ‘a disgrace’.
      Early on Wednesday, Trump said he would take the election to the supreme court to stop votes being counted. He falsely claimed victory, as the election remained too close to call with millions of votes yet to be counted
      US election 2020: Joe Biden has narrow lead over Trump in Wisconsin as result awaited – live updates
      US braces for long wait for election results as Trump falsely declares victory More

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      'Let me finish': John Bolton clashes with BBC journalist Emily Maitlis over Trump – video

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, gets into heated exchanges with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis over why he did not appear at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. He repeatedly tells Maitlis to ‘let him finish’, and blames House Democrats for empowering Trump when they failed to convict him during the impeachment trial. Maitlis also pressed Bolton on why he worked alongside Trump despite admitting he saw him as corrupt and a threat to American security More

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      'Deep down, he's a terrified little boy': Bob Woodward, John Bolton and others on Trump

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      Bob Woodward: ‘I can’t think of a time I’ve felt more anxiety about the presidency’Bob Woodward is associate editor of the Washington Post and the author of 20 books on American politics. In 50 years as a journalist he has covered nine presidents. His reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon and won the Post a Pulitzer prize. His latest book about Donald Trump, Rage, is based on 10 hours of interviews, spread over 19 taped phone calls, often initiated by the president himself, in which Trump proved “only too willing to blow the whistle on himself”, as the Observer’s review noted.There is an atmosphere in Washington of high anxiety. Trump is melting down, to put it charitably. His campaign has been about lashing out, about wanting his former political opponents – President Obama and Joe Biden, who’s now running against him, of course – to be indicted then charged. Then there was his announcement that he is not necessarily going to accept the electoral result against him. The idea that the president would put in doubt the basic process of democracy and voting is not only unacceptable, it is a nightmare. More

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      White House held talks over resuming US nuclear tests, John Bolton says

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      White House officials held a series of discussions over the past two years on the possibility of resuming US nuclear testing, according to the former national security adviser John Bolton.“Certainly the subject was discussed,” Bolton, a fierce advocate of testing, told the Guardian. However, there was opposition from some in the administration who felt current computer-based testing of US warheads was sufficient, and no decision was made by the time Bolton left the White House last September.When the prospect of the first US underground nuclear test in nearly three decades came up at a White House meeting in May, it triggered an outcry from arms control advocates and a Democratic amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, blocking funding for preparations for a test.Bolton, who has published a memoir on his time in the Trump White House titled The Room Where It Happened, said the issue was discussed in general terms on a number of occasions while he was national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. However, the discussions did not become “operational” as his priority had been to take the US out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.Donald Trump first announced he would leave the agreement – on the grounds of Russian violations – in October 2018, and the departure came into effect in August 2019. Bolton made it clear that he planned to withdraw the US signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty (CTBT), paving the way to nuclear testing, if he had stayed on at the White House.“We had general discussions about it on a number of occasions but there wasn’t a decision point,” he said. “I personally had other objectives like getting out of the INF treaty. I mean, you can’t do everything all at once.”A senior official told the Washington Post that the motivation for testing cited in the White House “deputies meeting” in May was to put pressure on Russia and China to enter trilateral arms control negotiations.“I never made that argument, and I doubt it would provide much leverage,” Bolton said.His argument for underground testing is that it is necessary to be certain of the reliability of the thousands of warheads in the US arsenal.Opponents of testing say that the computer-based analysis of the “stockpile stewardship and management plan” is quite sufficient, and that detonating a warhead would trigger a cascade of tests by other nuclear weapons states.“We don’t know fully what the impact of ageing is on either the reliability or the security and safety of the nuclear devices. So this is something we need for the credibility of the deterrent,” Bolton said. “I’m not talking about massive testing. I’m certainly not talking about atmospheric testing, but as one military commander described it to me: ‘Having 5,000 nuclear warheads is like having 5,000 Toyotas in a garage. You want to know that when you turn the key, it works the first time. Because if it doesn’t, it doesn’t work at all.’”The administration’s new arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, told the Senate on Tuesday: “We maintain and will maintain the ability to conduct nuclear tests if we see reason to do so.” But he added that he was “not aware of any reason to test at this stage”. More

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      John Bolton says Trump's Russian bounty intelligence denial 'not how system works' – video

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      Play Video 0:57 Former US national security advisor John Bolton says Donald Trump’s claim to not have been briefed over allegations Russia paid Taliban-linked militants bounties to kill coalition forces is ‘not the way the system works’. Speaking on Face the Nation after the release of his tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened , […] More