Ex-Trump security advisor: Why 'Bill Barr is wrong' about implications of immunity ruling
John Bolton — former security advisor to Donald Trump and attorney general to Ronald Reagan — shared with CNN's Kaitlan Collins his thoughts on the US Supreme Court's Monday decision to grant the MAGA hopeful immunity against federal prosecution for "official acts."
Bolton explains why he believes another former MAGA official is "wrong" about the potential outcome of the high court's ruling, and he also predicts that special counsel Jack Smith's January 6 indictment against Trump will still "survive."
"Former President Donald Trump has openly vowed to seek revenge against his political enemies," Collins noted, "if he does return to the White House. And today's Supreme Court ruling could give him enormous leeway to do just that. As democrats are sounding the alarm, Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr, though, is arguing that that concern is exaggerated."
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Collins then played a clip of a Fox News interview with Barr, in which the ex-Trump AG said: "I think those concerns are overblown about him seeking personal revenge against people. And second, I think that there are sufficient institutional checks and balances that that's very difficult to do, and certainly difficult to do without it being detected. So, the idea that he's going to be able to go to go out and weaponize, as they say, the Department of Justice against his adversaries, I don't think there's a particularly acute risk of that."
The CNN host turned to Bolton, noting, "You first read this indictment of Trump — in the January 6 case that this whole decision stemmed from — saying you didn't think any of the acts were official acts. So I wonder what you made of this ruling today."
"Well, I wouldn't have written the opinion this way at all," the ex-MAGA official said. "I do think that they overstated what the extent of immunity was, although they provided a lot of opportunity to question aspects of it saying it was only presumptive immunity. I think the key thing that they did, they could have done more of was to distinguish between official acts and non-official acts, which the DC Circuit and the District Court did not do an adequate job of."
Bolton continued, "In terms of the Jack Smith indictment, the vast bulk of it deals with the efforts on the fake elector a scheme, out in the states. Much less of a deals with the Justice Department. So, I think the indictments survives and i think that there's a lot more to come. I think there's gonna be another Supreme Court decision before this case goes to trial. I do think that there was not enough consideration by the majority to what the circumstances are where you can look at the president's motives. And that's where I think Bill Barr is wrong on what Trump is going to do. He is going to try to use the Justice Department to seek retribution against his enemies."
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