Barbara Boxer: “I want to close on a couple of topics. The first one, because I sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, is the…”

“I want to close on a couple of topics. The first one, because I sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, is the nomination of John Bolton to be our Ambassador to the United Nations. I do call on the President to rethink this nomination. Out of the thousands of strong, conservative Republicans who care about the world, there has to be somebody better than someone who has a pattern of not only abusing his staff, called a serial abuser by one witness, but also, and this is really threatening, trying to get them fired if they do not give him the information he wants. I am talking about false information and reaching down from the very high level at which he has been to the bottom of another agency that he did not even have direct line control over and trying to force not one but two and maybe three intelligence analysts to paint a picture that he wanted to use so that he could present a country as an imminent threat to this Nation, which could have led to some serious ramifications. Of all the people to pick now, it should not be someone who would try to politicize intelligence gathering. I received another letter on Friday, which I sent to both sides of the committee. I hope this will be looked at. It concerns a case where years ago John Bolton was trying to overturn a U.N. resolution--or have it modified--that dealt with infant formula in the developing nations.…”