Senate Republicans on Monday defended President Donald Trump over his removal of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, whose office was investigating the president’s associates before his abrupt firing over the weekend.

Though some lawmakers took issue with the Justice Department’s chaotic handling of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s termination, GOP senators returned to a familiar refrain — deferring to Trump’s judgment as he continues to remove officials involved in the myriad probes that have ensnared him and people close to him for years.

“The president’s been under investigation since before he was elected,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) lamented, calling the episode a “sideshow” amid the Senate’s efforts to pass a police reform bill this week.

Eager to avoid controversy in an election year, Republicans mostly defended Berman’s removal from his post with the Southern District of New York, arguing that Trump — and every president — has the sole power to hire and fire political appointees. Republicans have routinely referenced that authority as Trump has fired several officials over the past few months who are perceived to be disloyal to him, including some who were integral in the efforts to impeach him.

And they quickly dismissed Democrats’ suggestions about a corrupt motive in removing Berman — specifically, potential interference with ongoing investigations involving the president.

“These people all serve at the pleasure of the president,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said. He has exercised his prerogatives to fire people at various times.”

Cornyn added: “Everything the president does generates controversy. Everything the attorney general does generates controversy. It doesn’t mean it’s warranted. Clearly, the attorney general and the president were within their rights.”

The Justice Department was in turmoil over the weekend after Attorney General William Barr announced late on Friday night that Berman was stepping down from his position atop the powerful federal prosecutors’ office. Berman said he had “no intention of resigning,” adding that he only learned of his firing from Barr’s public announcement. He vowed to stay put until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement.

The standoff ensued until Saturday, when Barr told Berman that Trump had agreed to fire him, and Berman vacated the post after Barr said he would allow Berman’s top deputy to take over the office.

Trump later said he was “not involved” in the firing, and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president merely signed off on the termination while Barr “was taking the lead on this matter.” McEnany on Monday denied that Berman’s removal was tied to his investigations and prosecutions of several Trump associates.

Still, the episode has raised questions about possible interference with SDNY’s ongoing, high-profile investigations involving Trump.

Some Republicans took issue with the initial handling and the immediate fallout of the decision, which triggered renewed allegations from Trump’s opponents that Barr was seeking to shield the president and his associates from accountability.

“It could have been done more smoothly. But it’s a situation where the U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said. “That’s how our constitutional system works.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who chairs the Senate’s chief oversight body, added: “It is his prerogative to do that. I thought the whole situation was rather strange.”

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said the Justice Department’s handling of the matter was “a bit inartful,” though he dismissed allegations of a corrupt motive.

“I just want to know, is there anything he did that would impede [ongoing] investigations — and I don’t think so,” Graham said, referring to promises by top administration officials, including Barr.

“You show me fishy, then I’ll be the first one to tell Horowitz to go look,” he added, referring to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the lone Republican senator to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, said the firing “looks pretty swampy.”

“I certainly hope that any investigations that were being pursued — particularly those that would relate to the president, or donors, or friends — would continue to be pursued,” Romney said.

Berman donated to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and has contributed to various other GOP political campaigns in recent years. But over the past few years, his office has investigated and charged high-profile Trump associates.

“My assumption is that any investigations that were underway will be continuing,” Thune said of the probes.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York, Trump’s personal attorney, is currently under investigation by the prosecutor’s office; the Trump Organization has also been under a microscope over potential violations of campaign-finance law; and federal prosecutors there have already indicted two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Berman’s office also successfully prosecuted Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, for campaign-finance violations related to a hush-money payment to a woman who alleged she had an affair with Trump.

Berman was never confirmed by the Senate to his role as U.S. attorney. He was appointed to the post on an acting basis, but the White House was slow to submit a nominee to the Senate, prompting the SDNY judges to appoint him to the role.

Barr has vowed that there will not be any interference with ongoing investigations at SDNY — a promise Republicans emphasized as they defended the move.

“[If] they’re worried about interference with the investigations, Barr said there wouldn’t be any interference,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a former Judiciary Committee chairman, said Monday.

“And I don’t understand why the Democrats are complaining about Berman if the person that’s going to take his place, Berman himself said that that person is competent,” Grassley added. “So I don’t know what the big deal is, really.”

But Grassley himself raised alarms in 2007 when the attorney at the time, Alberto Gonzales, presided over the removal of multiple U.S. attorneys amid questions about political motivations.

“It is improper for a president to fire a U.S. attorney for retaliatory reasons or to impede or obstruct a particular prosecution for unjust political or partisan gain,” Grassley said at the time. “We don’t want to see the independence, integrity of our attorneys compromised to the point where they aren’t serving their districts in the interests of justice.”

Though Grassley acknowledged that presidents have the power to hire and fire their own U.S. attorneys, he said the handling of the matter — particularly inconsistent statements made by the attorney general — were problematic.

“We shouldn’t be getting conflicting statements from the attorney general and/or his staff,” Grassley said at the time. “We shouldn’t be getting conflicting statements at all. The story must be consistent, complete and of course it must be the truth. We and the American people expect nothing less from our top law enforcement official.”

Democrats have been intensely critical of Berman’s removal, saying it amounted to an effort to interfere with the prosecutor’s investigations involving the president and his associates.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the Justice Department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility to conduct a joint investigation into Berman’s termination. The White House had initially sought to install Craig Carpentino, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, atop the SDNY. Schumer on Monday lauded Berman’s “courage,” saying that his initial refusal to step down allowed for his top deputy, Audrey Strauss, to instead take over the office.

Schumer has also called on Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to step aside as Trump’s nominee to replace Berman on a permanent basis, adding that Clayton shouldn’t be “an accomplice to this scheme.” Schumer has said he would not return a “blue slip” for Clayton’s nomination. (Senators who withhold blue slips can block nominees to positions in their home states.)

Graham indicated over the weekend that Clayton’s nomination was unlikely to proceed because he intends to continue honoring the “blue slip” policy.

On the House side, the Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday centering on allegations of politicization of the Justice Department under Trump. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of that panel, said he expected Berman to testify at some point, though it is unclear whether he or anyone involved in the firing will appear before the committee this week.

Kyle Cheney and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

A top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has agreed to testify to lawmakers next week about his role in the abrupt removal of former State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the House Foreign Affairs Committee announced Monday.

Brian Bulatao, the undersecretary of State for management, has emerged as a central figure in Linick’s ouster, which came as the watchdog was leading multiple investigations into Pompeo’s conduct. Linick told lawmakers that Bulatao — a longtime colleague and confidant of Pompeo’s since their days at West Point — had at times tried to “bully” him about the investigations, particularly a sensitive probe about Pompeo’s role in an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Linick was also investigating Pompeo and his wife’s use of government resources for personal errands.

State Department aides have pushed back on suggestions that Pompeo or Bulatao acted improperly, alleging that Linick himself was the one acting improperly. Pompeo recently told reporters Linick was a “bad actor” in the department and wasn’t adequately fulfilling the role of inspector general.

Late Monday, the committee, in conjunction with the House Oversight Committee, revealed an expanding probe: six closed-door depositions will take place over the next month. The first, on June 29, will feature Pompeo's executive secretary Lisa Kenna. On July 8, the week after Bulatao testifies, the committees plan to call Mike Miller, the deputy assistant secretary for defense trade. On July 10, the panels plan to call Toni Porter, a senior adviser in the department. Later in July, the panels plan to call Marik String, a former deputy assistant secretary; Charles Faulkner, a former principal deputy assistant secretary; and R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Political Military Affairs.

State Department officials did not respond to a request for comment about Bulatao‘s planned appearance before the House committee.

That appearance, which a committee aide said had been confirmed, will be in a public session of the committee, a high-profile moment as Democrats seek to investigate President Donald Trump’s concerted effort to push back on the independence of inspectors general tasked with rooting out waste and misconduct inside the federal government. Trump told Congress he removed Linick because of a loss of confidence in the watchdog, but he later told reporters that he ousted Linick at the request of Pompeo and knew little about his work.

Bulatao’s planned appearance marks a shift: Senior State Department officials refused to cooperate with House investigators during last year’s impeachment investigation, ignoring subpoenas for documents and testimony from central figures in the probe, including another close Pompeo confidant, State Department counsel Ulrich Brechbuhl.

The strained relationship between Linick and Bulatao is at the heart of the committee’s investigation. Bulatao told the committee that Linick botched an investigation into his own office’s handling of a sensitive report about political retaliation inside the State Department, which leaked to the media ahead of its release. Linick was cleared in that probe by Pentagon watchdog Glenn Fine, whom Linick had asked to conduct the review.

Linick told lawmakers he faced pressure to stop looking into the Saudi arms sale, which Pompeo allies said was a policy dispute rather than a question of management. Linick said his response was that he was investigating the implementation of the policy, which is within the inspector general’s scope. Linick also emphasized that Bulatao was among a small inner circle of Pompeo aides who was informed of his ongoing probe of Pompeo’s use of government resources.

Susan Page, who sat down with John Bolton for the first print interview for his new book, "The Room Where it Happened", talks about what we learned.

Rep. Eliot Engel and President Barack Obama didn’t always see eye-to-eye on issues of foreign policy. The New York congressman, as staunch a Middle East hawk as there currently is in the Democratic Party, was the most high-profile House Democrat to oppose Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the biggest foreign policy initiative of his presidency. Now, Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is fighting for his political life amid a primary challenge to his left from Jamaal Bowman, a former high school principal. Obama administration alumni want him to know they haven’t forgotten his vote—and that they don’t especially like what he’s gotten done since. As some key figures in the party establishment, from Hillary Clinton to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have lined up to support Engel, high-profile former Obama advisers, some of whom have immense sway with liberals nationwide through the popular podcasts from Crooked Media, have joined forces with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in an effort to eject him from the House. “Bowman is the kind of progressive, exciting young leader that Democrats should be electing,” said Tommy Vietor, co-host of Crooked’s Pod Save America podcast and a former Obama national security spokesman. “I also think that [the Foreign Affairs Committee] should be more progressive when it comes to oversight, fighting annexation [of the West Bank], supporting diplomacy like the [Iran Deal] and unwinding parts of the U.S.-Saudi relationship that allow for the continued humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.”“We need fresh thinking on that committee,” Vietor wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. On a June 10 episode of “Pod Save the World,” co-hosts Vietor and Ben Rhodes, the former top Obama foreign policy hand, encouraged their listeners to check out Bowman. “Despite my briefings—I hope not because of them—he opposed the Iran nuclear deal,” Rhodes said of Engel. “He’s taken a pretty conventional line on issues related to Iran, Saudi, the Middle East more generally.”As Engel’s primary becomes the party’s next big proxy battle, virtually no one is projecting that if Engel loses on June 23—an outcome seen as increasingly possible in Democratic circles—it will be because of his hawkish foreign policy views. At a June 3 event in his district, Engel was caught on a hot mic saying he “wouldn’t be here” if he didn’t have a primary. In May, The Atlantic reported that he’d ridden out the worst of COVID-19 in his Maryland home, not in the New York City-area seat he represents, which was one of the hardest-hit places in the country.House Chairman Demands Briefing on Kushner’s Trip to Saudi ArabiaThe toppling of the Foreign Affairs Chairman, however, would reverberate far beyond his district. “There’s a pretty profound desire in Democratic foreign policy circles for a more progressive approach, and that’s not where Eliot Engel is or who he is,” a former Obama official told The Daily Beast. “He’s not bad—he’s not creatively moving us in the direction a lot of us would like to go.”Over his 31 years in Congress, Engel has become one of the eminent voices in either party pushing for a hawkish view on Middle East policy. In 2003, he supported the invasion of Iraq. In 2004, he led a group of lawmakers pushing for cuts in the U.S. contribution to the United Nations office that aids Palestinian refugees. In early 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to Congress that Democratic lawmakers either boycotted or excoriated as an “insult” to them and to President Obama. Engel, however, called Netanyahu’s speech “compelling” and said he communicated “legitimate concerns.” When Engel announced his opposition to the nuclear deal later that year, he said that the agreement Obama had worked at “may in fact strengthen Iran’s position as a destabilizing and destructive influence.” He was one of 25 House Democrats who voted against ratifying it. That record has earned Engel the ironclad support of pro-Israel groups—several of which have rallied to the 16-term incumbent in an expensive last-ditch effort to save him. The political action committee for a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, for example, has dropped over $1 million in ads boosting Engel and attacking Bowman—including a Wednesday spot that hit the challenger over a years-old unpaid tax bill. At least two other pro-Israel groups have run ads in support of Engel on social media. “He’s been both a champion and a leader of pro-Israel efforts in the House,” said Mark Mellman, president of Democratic Majority for Israel. “He would be much missed and that’s why we're making a real effort to keep him in office.”Obama’s own views and vision on Middle East policy, meanwhile, earned him a famously icy relationship with the right-wing Israeli government and this constellation of American pro-Israel groups—such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has ties to the PAC now bankrolling Engel’s rescue. At their annual Washington convention one year during Obama’s tenure, AIPAC delegates had to be told not to boo the sitting president. Engel and Obama didn’t prioritize the same things when it came to foreign policy, according to a former Obama official, who said that the congressman’s opposition to the Iran Deal “colored private perceptions” of him through the end of the Obama presidency. “I think the important thing is what got Eliot Engel to that vote. It was the opposite of what President Obama stood for.” And that vote, the official added, “was not the first sour taste he left in the prior administration’s mouth.”As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Engel has used his perch to contribute to Democratic investigations of President Donald Trump, from the Ukraine-driven impeachment inquiry to probes of Secretary Mike Pompeo’s handling of the State Department. That side of Engel’s record is the one more frequently touted by big-name endorsers such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lead prosecutor of the case against Trump in the Senate impeachment trial.“Ever since Trump took office, Eliot has helped expose the abuses of his administration, and hold this lawless president accountable,” Schiff said in his endorsement of Engel. Bowman, for his part, has not made Engel’s foreign policy record a centerpiece of his campaign, though he has criticized the incumbent’s positions and has touted endorsements from progressive foreign policy groups that oppose Engel’s hardline stances. Ironically, if Engel were to lose, it’s possible he’d be replaced as chairman by another hawk, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who also voted against the Iran deal and is currently the next most senior Democrat on the panel. Obama alumni insist that their enthusiasm for ousting Engel is nothing personal; many of them like him. “The real story here is he’s got this energetic, charismatic, young challenger who talks about a lot of the issues that are at the heart of today’s progressive agenda,” said a former administration official. “It’s not that he lost people on foreign policy, but despite being chairman… the Obama wonk foreign policy constituency is not lined up for him.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Steven Bannon’s platform to air COVID-19 conspiracy theories is distributed by a con man who has a long list of serious arrests dating back decades and a federal bank-fraud conviction. War Room: Pandemic is a podcast and radio program that appeals to a MAGA audience and focuses on the coronavirus, and is hosted by President Trump’s former chief strategist at the White House and by the former Nigel Farage adviser Raheem Kassam.It has covered COVID-19 and pushed false narratives about the virus, including giving weight to the unproven theory that it was somehow man-made.The hour-long broadcasts—which have been viewed by millions and which originally started as War Room: Impeachment in October, and then pivoted to the pandemic in late January—are part of a stable of Trump-aligned conservative news programs distributed by America's Voice News (AVN), a website and satellite TV network. AVN is operated by Colorado-based Robert Sigg, who has a criminal background and, in an unusual twist, has historically donated to Democratic political candidates and causes. Sigg operates AVN through another entity, Performance One Media LLC.   Revealed: The Family Member Who Turned on Trump Sigg’s arrest record dates back to the 1980s and includes arrests for domestic violence, driving under the influence, assault, battery, burglary, and drug offenses; the charges were later dismissed. Sigg also has a track record of white-collar crime; in 2006, he was convicted for his role in a $19 million mortgage-fraud scheme. At the time of his arrest, the FBI announced that Sigg and his fellow defendants were charged because of their “alleged roles in a scheme to obtain loans employing stolen identities, and then utilizing these loan proceeds to purchase substandard houses.” Sigg pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud and a federal court sentenced him to time served and ordered him to pay more than $140,000 in restitution. His son Austin is also no stranger to law enforcement; he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old girl from Westminster, Colorado, in 2013.Although Sigg hosts a far-right news source, he has donated around $72,000 to the Democratic Party, its causes, and candidates, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the 2016 Clinton campaign, and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer. It’s unclear why he switched allegiances and jumped on the MAGA bandwagon.Sigg and AVN did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesperson for Bannon didn’t answer questions as to whether Bannon knew of Sigg’s criminal background or association with the Democratic Party, or if the onetime executive chairman of Breitbart News would continue his association with AVN.“America’s Voice News has been one of a dozen of our strong distribution partners, which has allowed us to reach over tens of millions of views and over 10 million downloads,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “With a vibrant and diverse audience, the show is growing aggressively throughout the globe, including in China, where it is broadcast through the firewall in Mandarin.”The show is also broadcast on YouTube, John Fredericks Radio Network, Newsmax TV, and Salem Radio Network, and is available to download on podcast platforms. Bannon has plans to expand its reach further with Spanish-language and Portuguese versions of the show. The coronavirus pandemic, and the conservative backlash to public-health measures to curb it, have given AVN one of its most viral and controversial segments yet—an interview with anti-vaccine activist and Massachusetts Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai, who alleged that the science behind COVID-19 and the U.S. response to it is part of a conspiracy involving Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates designed to damage Trump’s re-election chances. Fauci, Ayyadura says, is “a guy who's embedded in the ‘deep state’” and is “highly embedded into the Big Pharma medical school education.”The segment went viral among QAnon fans and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists, racking up six million views on YouTube alone before being pulled from the video-sharing platform. Among the biggest boosters of content from Bannon’s Warroom.org and America’s Voice News on social media is Bannon’s own political action committee, Citizens of the American Republic. Citizens of the American Republic (COAR) is a 501(c)(4) organization founded by Bannon. Its Facebook page is one of the most frequent amplifiers of America’s Voice News and War Room: Pandemic on Facebook. COAR advances the ideologies of “economic nationalism” and “America First.”Sigg is just the latest media executive who has paired up with Bannon since the latter’s 2018 split with the wealthy Bob and Rebekah Mercer, who bankrolled his tenure at Breitbart. More recently, Bannon, who was unceremoniously dumped from his role in the White House, has courted Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire who fled the People’s Republic following corruption allegations from Chinese officials and presented himself as a whistleblower and dissident upon his arrival in the U.S. Guo Media struck a million-dollar deal with Bannon to provide “strategic consulting services” and help raise the profile of Guo’s news company. Guo has been a repeat guest on Bannon’s show and, like Bannon, is a proponent of the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan.On the Feb. 21 edition of War Room: Pandemic, Wengui was asked by Bannon about the origins of novel coronavirus and whether it came out of a Wuhan "wet market" or if it originated from a "biological weapons program."“I believe there is no doubt this is man-made, not from, you know, the seafood market, animal market,” Wengui responded. “This is truly ridiculous.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Former national security adviser John Bolton defended his decision not to testify in the House impeachment inquiry into President Trump, telling ABC’s Martha Raddatz that his testimony would not have made a difference in the outcome.“I don't think...

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night that the most important person in the White House was President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.“It varied from time to time,” Bolton said. “The sustained answer to that question… is Jared Kushner.”Bolton went on to say that Trump was generally uninformed and did not do his homework.“There was an unwillingness… to do systematic learning so he could make the most informed decisions,” Bolton said, adding that the president’s day didn’t “start until almost lunchtime.”“I don’t think he is fit for office,” Bolton said.What the Hell Is John Bolton?Bolton’s interview with ABC comes just two days before the release of his book, titled The Room Where It Happened. The Department of Justice last week attempted to put an injunction on the book and block its release. But the judge in Washington struck down that effort Saturday.Most of Bolton’s comments about the president seemed to focus on the president’s inability to study and understand foreign policy.“Trump was not following any international grand strategy,” Bolton said.Trump said he ousted Bolton from his position at the NSC in September in the midst of the Ukraine scandal and in the lead-up to the House impeachment inquiry. (Bolton now claims that he resigned.)Over the past week the White House has scrambled to contain the fallout from Bolton’s book and has tried to paint the former national security adviser as a disgruntled former official attempting to profit off of lies.In his interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Bolton laid out a series of foreign policy events where he says Trump “did not understand” U.S. policy and instead thought that forging personal relationships with leaders would bring friendlier relations between two nations.“I think many of these foreign leaders mastered at ringing his bells,” Bolton said. Bolton said Trump tried to become close with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in an attempt to smooth relations between the two countries and come to an agreement on nuclear weapons.“I think Kim Jong Un gets a huge kick out of this,” Bolton said. “Nobody should misunderstand that a personal relationship is somehow equivalent to better relations between two nations.” Bolton said that during the Singapore Summit in 2018 Trump gave concessions to Kim in private talks.Perhaps no other foreign policy relationship was more concerning to Bolton than the one between Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Bolton said it was clear Putin had a hold over Trump“I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle. I don’t think he is worried about Donald Trump,” Bolton said. “I can just see the smirk when he knows he’s got him following his line.”The former national security adviser said Trump’s callous indifference to establishing streamlined foreign policy eventually led to the breakdown of relations between the U.S. and Ukraine.“He directly linked the provision of [Ukraine’s] assistance with that provision,” Bolton said of Trump holding up the country’s military aid in exchange for President Volodymyr Zelensky pushing officials in Kyiv to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.Bolton was called to testify in the House impeachment probe but declined Democrats’ outreach, saying “it wouldn’t have made a difference” if he had answered their questions. “Minds were already made up on Capitol Hill,” he said.Bolton said Democrats carried out “impeachment malpractice” and that the House Democrats should have taken more time to carry out the investigation. Instead, he said, they chose to “keep it narrow and move it fast.”If there was one incident that pushed him over the edge, Bolton said, it was Trump’s decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David on the week of 9/11. That’s when he decided to resign, Bolton said. But the president fired him first.“I should have striked preemptively,” Bolton said. “He and I had a one-on-one conversation in the afternoon and I said, ‘If you want me to resign I’ll do it.’ And we decided to talk about it later in the afternoon.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.