“UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT”
Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser in his first term and later angered the administration with the publication of a highly critical book, The Room Where it Happened.
He has since become a highly visible and pugnacious detractor of Trump, frequently appearing on television news shows and in print to condemn the man he has called “unfit to be president”.
Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against perceived enemies, purging government officials he deemed to be disloyal, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.
After Trump left the White House in 2021, James brought a major civil fraud case against him, alleging he and his real estate company had inflated his wealth and manipulated the value of properties to obtain favorable bank loans or insurance terms.
A New York state judge ordered Trump to pay US$464 million but a higher court removed the financial penalty while upholding the underlying judgment.
The cases against James and Comey were filed by Trump’s handpicked US attorney, Lindsey Halligan, after the previous prosecutor resigned saying there was not enough evidence to charge them.
Appointed to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation by then-president Barack Obama in 2013, Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 amid the probe into whether any members of the Trump presidential campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 election.
Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Neither case came to trial, and special counsel Jack Smith – in line with a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president – dropped them both after Trump won the November 2024 presidential election.
Source: CNA
