Bolton: Trump asked China for election help

US President Donald Trump “pleaded” with China’s Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects, according to a scathing new book by former Trump adviser John Bolton.

The White House was working furiously to block release of the book, whose China revelations carry echoes of Trump’s efforts to solicit political help from Ukraine that led to his impeachment.

Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser for a 17-month period, called Trump’s attempt to shift the June 2019 conversation to the US election a stunning move, and wrote that it was among innumerable conversations that “formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behaviour that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency”.

The book, titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir has been the subject of a lengthy battle between Bolton and the White House. The Department of Justice filed suit on Wednesday in an effort to delay publication of the book, claiming it still contained highly classified information and a required review by the National Security Council had not been concluded. According to the filing, a career official determined no classified material remained in April, but that national security adviser Robert O’Brien initiated a secondary review that deemed additional information to be classified.

The White House’s contention that so much of the book was classified appeared to be a tacit admission that many of Bolton’s allegations were accurate.