John Bolton: ‘Very disturbing’ how Trump wanted to keep classified documents

Former national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday said former President Trump appeared to have a “pattern” of wanting to collect materials “of interest to him,” including classified documents, and knocked Trump’s behavior as “very disturbing.” 

“I think he was kind of a collector of things that he thought were of interest to him for some reason or another, clippings, mementos, classified documents. And it was very disturbing,” Bolton said on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” 

“We could see in the course of meetings within intelligence briefings, decision meetings, that sometimes he liked to retain things, and it became the practice, just to make sure that we got them back in as many cases as we could. Obviously, we failed in many cases. But it was a pattern that was evident to me from, sort of, my earliest days,” said Bolton, who served under Trump. 

Bolton’s comments come after Trump earlier this month pleaded not guilty to 37 counts after a DOJ indictment alleging he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice in his handling of classified documents after his term in office.

Host Jen Psaki on Sunday asked Bolton whether Trump, who is now running again for president in 2024, ever held onto a document that concerned the former national security adviser. 

“Well, there were some that we did get back. Others, the most famous, to me, it demonstrates why I don’t need to read the indictment or believe its allegations are true, although I’m pretty confident they are — was the famous tweet that he did after getting an overhead picture of a failed Iranian missile launch, which he was shown during an intelligence briefing. [He] didn’t give [it] back, and it was tweeted before the intelligence officials got back to their office,” Bolton said, referring to a 2019 tweet from the then-president. 

“There’s utterly no excuse for that. There’s no conceivable reason for that except that made him feel good to be able to do it. That’s one example, but it’s typical of the mindset in my view.”