John Bolton
John BoltonYoni Kempinski

US President Donald Trump “pleaded” with China’s Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects, says the new book by former Trump adviser John Bolton, according to an Associated Press report on Wednesday.

The book accuses the President of being driven by political calculations when making national security decisions. The Associated Press obtained a copy of Bolton’s book in advance of its release next week.

Bolton, Trump's national security adviser for a 17-month period, called Trump's attempt to shift the June 2019 conversation with Xi to the US election a stunning move, and wrote that it was among innumerable conversations that he found concerning.

Deeply critical of the president and much of his senior team, Bolton wrote that because staff had served him so poorly, Trump “saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.” He added that while he was at the White House, Trump typically had only two intelligence briefings a week “and in most of those, he spoke at greater length than the briefers, often on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand.”

As for the meeting with the Chinese president in Osaka, Japan, Bolton wrote that Trump told Xi that Democrats were hostile to China.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton said. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”

Bolton wrote that he would print Trump’s exact words, “but the government’s pre-publication review process has decided otherwise."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the specifics in Bolton's book, but emailed reporters past quotes of Democratic lawmakers impugning the former Trump aide's credibility.

In advance of the public reports about the details, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the book was “full of classified information, which is inexcusable.”

Wednesday’s publication comes a day after the Trump administration asked a federal judge to order Bolton to stop the publication of his book, saying he had breached a non-disclosure agreement and was risking the exposure of classified information.

On Monday, Trump said it was “totally inappropriate” for Bolton to write a memoir about his work in the White House.

“If he wrote a book, I can’t imagine that he can because that’s highly classified information. I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean if he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he’s broken the law and I would think he would have criminal problems,” Trump told reporters during a meeting in the Cabinet Room.

Bolton was dismissed by Trump last September. Trump later explained the dismissal by saying that Bolton made “mistakes”, including insulting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by demanding that North Korea follow the "Libya model" of nuclear disarmament.

In November, two months after the dismissal, Bolton returned to Twitter after a lengthy absence and accused the White House of blocking access to his account.