Trump lashes out against John Bolton in response to damning allegations in tell-all memoir, which the president says is 'made up of lies and fake stories'

• President Donald Trump has lashed out at his former national security adviser John Bolton over the slew of allegations against the Trump administration in Bolton's coming book.
• Bolton made various claims about the president, including that Trump showed approval for concentration camps in China and urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to support his reelection.
• In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump accused Bolton of breaking the law and called him a "washed-up guy."
• "Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him," Trump tweeted late Wednesday. "A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!"

President Donald Trump slammed his former national security adviser John Bolton over the slew of allegations against the Trump administration in Bolton's coming book.

Excerpts and summaries of Bolton's explosive tell-all book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," were released Wednesday, detailing conversations that Bolton said took place inside the Trump White House, where he wrote that "obstruction of justice" was seen "as a way of life."

Bolton said the president gave "personal favors to dictators he liked" and, remarkably, sought the help of Chinese President Xi Jinping with his US reelection efforts during a 2019 meeting in Osaka, Japan.

Bolton also said Trump showed approval of China holding Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps.

"According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," Bolton wrote.

Lawmakers at the time urged the Trump administration to consider implementing sanctions on China for its treatment of the Uyghurs. The president on Wednesday signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, according to the White House.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who also attended the meeting with Trump and Xi in Osaka, said Bolton's account of their conversation "never happened" and was "absolutely untrue," according to The Wall Street Journal.

In response to Bolton's allegations in the book, Trump called him a "liar."

"Everybody in the White House hated John Bolton," the president said in an interview with The Journal.

Bolton's book also elaborated on the Ukraine scandal that was at the center of Trump's impeachment trial early this year; Bolton wrote that Trump kept telling White House officials to withhold aid to the country as leverage for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

"Ukraine tried to take me down. I'm not f---ing interested in helping them," the book quoted Trump as saying in May 2019, according to The Journal.

Rep. Adam Schiff, who served as the lead impeachment manager, condemned Bolton's revelation, saying he "may be an author, but he's no patriot." Bolton refused to testify before House impeachment investigators even though it was clear at the time that he planned to discuss the events surrounding Ukraine in his book.

"Bolton's staff were asked to testify before the House to Trump's abuses, and did. They had a lot to lose and showed real courage," Schiff tweeted Wednesday. "When Bolton was asked, he refused, and said he'd sue if subpoenaed."

"Instead, he saved it for a book," Schiff added. Bolton had eventually offered to discuss the matter if the Republican-led Senate subpoenaed him, but it never did.

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against Bolton for his book, and the Justice Department filed an emergency restraining order Wednesday seeking to stop Bolton's book from being published, saying it revealed "classified information."

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a Wednesday statement that publishing Bolton's book would "damage our national security and threaten the sources and methods the Intelligence Community relies upon to safeguard the American people."

"Regardless of rank and position, every individual entrusted with access to our nation's secrets has a legal duty and responsibility to protect classified information," he continued.

In a phone interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump also said Bolton "broke the law" with his bombshell book.

"I used a washed-up guy," Trump told Hannity. "I gave him a chance."

In a late-night tweet Wednesday, Trump wrote, "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," Trump wrote. "A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!"