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President Donald Trump has urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “go after Bitcoin” as early as mid-2018 amid the ongoing trade war with China, according to an unpublished book written by his former national security advisor John Bolton.
Trump Against Bitcoin
President Trump has not been supportive of any cryptocurrency as he pointed out himself in July 2019:
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity…”
Yet, while he tweeted that last year, recently emerged information claimed that he had Bitcoin in his sights as early as May 2018. This data came from a book that’s creating controversy even before it’s published called The Room Where It Happened by the former national security advisor John Bolton.
The Washington Examiner says it has a copy of the book, in which President Trump told Mnuchin to clamp down on the trading and selling of Bitcoin. While the two were discussing trade sanctions and tariffs against China, the commander-in-chief allegedly said, “don’t be a trade negotiator,” and urged Mnuchin to “go after Bitcoin [for fraud],” the report notes.
“If you don’t want me on trade, fine, your economic team will execute whatever you want,” was the response from the Treasury Secretary.
Bolton’s Bold Accusations Against Trump
Trump’s former national security advisor makes some serious allegations, according to other reports. For instance, the US president was willing to halt criminal investigations to “give personal favors to dictators he liked.”
Bolton also claims that Trump pleaded with China’s President Xi Jinping to help him get re-elected by buying more US agricultural products. While President Jinping explained why he was building concentration camps in China, the book reportedly reads that Trump “said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”
Bolton went even further, asserting a serious pattern of corruption in which Trump has attempted to leverage the power of the US on other nations for his personal gains. Bolton stated that this “pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept.”
Trump Fires Back
President Trump is among the most vocal US leaders and doesn’t stay quiet, especially on Twitter. As such, he was quick to respond against the accusations from the “wacko” Bolton:
Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
The Washington Post informed that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, asking a federal judge to order Bolton to stop the publication of the book. The DOJ argued that Bolton had used lots of classified material.