House Democrats sped through their impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump because they didn't want to "mess up the Democratic presidential nomination," and that makes their conduct "equivalent" to President Donald Trump's, according to former national security adviser John Bolton.
"I find that conduct almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump, that they're torquing one of the gravest constitutional responsibilities the House of Representatives has, the power of impeachment, around their presidential nomination schedule," Bolton said during an extensive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz airing Sunday. "They failed utterly to accomplish what they wanted. In fact, they made things worse, because their strategy fitted with the Trump political strategy."
The interview came in advance of Bolton's tell-all memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," which the Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to block. The book officially comes out on Tuesday.
Bolton also rejected complaints from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and other Democrats who said he held back information vital to Trump's impeachment in order to profit from it through his book.
"I was fully prepared — if I got a subpoena like everybody else who testified got a subpoena," Bolton told Raddatz. "I think the way the House advocates of impeachment proceeded was badly wrong. I think it was impeachment malpractice. I think they were determined because of their own political objectives to conduct an impeachment proceeding that was very narrowly focused on Ukraine, and that went very, very quickly."
He added that he thinks Schiff and other House Democrats are using him as a scapegoat, as they "built a cliff [and] they threw themselves off of it."
Meanwhile, Bolton said he's not going to vote for either Joe Biden or Trump for president, but he'll "figure out a conservative Republican to write in."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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