ABC News Lands Exclusive With John Bolton About Memoir Claiming Donald Trump Committed Many “Ukraine-Like Transgressions”

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ABC News’ Martha Raddatz has landed the first exclusive interview with John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, prior to the publication of his new memoir in which he claims the president committed a number of “Ukraine-like transgressions,” in the words of publisher Simon & Schuster.

The network has scheduled a one-hour primetime special on Sunday, starting at 9 PM ET. Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, is scheduled to be published two days later.

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Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, posted a photo on Twitter of the sit-down. “He’s the man the president doesn’t want you to hear,” Raddatz wrote.

According to ABC News, “Bolton will provide a first-hand account of crucial moments including private meetings in the Oval Office, the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki and the president’s historic meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. For the first time publicly, Bolton will also present his account of the July 25, 2019 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and discuss why he didn’t testify during the president’s impeachment trial.”

According to a Simon & Schuster news release last week, “Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy — and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.”

“What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation,” the release stated.

The interview also will air on Good Morning America, World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News Live Prime and other platforms.

Bolton’s memoir has triggered criticism on the left and the right. Democrats believe he should have come forward as the House conducted impeachment proceedings against the president; the White House has argued that the book contains classified information, an allegation that Bolton’s attorney said was a “transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor” him.

Later on Monday, Trump suggested to reporters that Bolton will face “criminal liability” for the publication of the book. “I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean that if he wrote a book and the book gets out, he has broken the law. That would mean that he would have criminal problems. I hope so.”

Attorney General William Barr said that they “didn’t believe” that Bolton had completed the clearance process for the book.

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