Turkey Criticizes Ex-Trump Aide Bolton for ‘Manipulative’ Memoir
Turkey Criticizes Ex-Trump Aide Bolton for ‘Manipulative’ Memoir
(Bloomberg) -- Turkey accused former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton of misrepresenting President Donald Trump’s conversations with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his recently published memoir.
The book “includes misleading, one-sided and manipulative presentations of our leader President Erdogan’s conversations with the US President Donald Trump,” Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said in a Twitter post, without elaborating.
In his book about his time as national security adviser, Bolton wrote that Trump told Erdogan he would “take care of things” after the Turkish president gave him a memo claiming the innocence of Turkish lender Halkbank, under investigation in New York for allegedly violating Iran sanctions. Trump explained that Southern District prosecutors investigating the case had been appointed by the previous administration -- “a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton wrote.
Halkbank has denied wrongdoing. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, resigned last week after a standoff with Trump and Attorney General William Barr. Berman’s office is also investigating allegations against Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani.
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