Among the most startling disclosures in John Bolton’s new book is his account of President Trump’s dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkey story — featuring the American president assuring Erdogan he would “take care of things” in an ongoing federal criminal investigation — may be the clearest, most continuous narrative of misconduct by Trump that has yet surfaced.
It’s a tale that connects some of Trump’s closest advisers: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Bolton says he warned Attorney General William P. Barr in April 2019 that Trump’s repeated efforts to help Erdogan showed his “penchant to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked.”
The Turkey story begins, like much about Trump, with his personal business interests. When he launched Trump Towers Istanbul in April 2012, his daughter Ivanka Trump tweeted thanks to Erdogan, the prime minister at the time, for attending. With them was a Turkish businessman named Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, whom Donald Trump described at the opening as a “great friend” of Ivanka. Kushner, her husband, was there, too.
