Jeffrey LewisAppearance of Impropriety

More on John Bolton’s nomination as Ambassador to the UN.

I can think of 30,000 reasons that Bolton should not be confirmed for this post.

The Washington Post previously reported that former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui maintained “a secret $100 million fund to buy influence with foreign governments, institutions and individuals”:

Taiwanese officials said the fund also paid for research by John Bolton, the current undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, who received $30,000 over three years in the mid-1990s for research papers on U.N. membership issues involving Taiwan. As a senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton supported U.S. recognition of Taiwan as a separate country and its return to the United Nations.

Let me emphasize that: “Bolton … received $30,000 over three years in the mid-1990s for research papers on U.N. membership issues involving Taiwan.”

Bolton subsequently confirmed, during the confirmation process, that he was in fact paid $30,000 by the “Taiwanese government” to write “three papers for them on UN membership questions.”

If Bolton is confirmed as US Ambassador, I insist we refer to Bolton as the “Taiwan Ambassador to the UN.”

Back in the day, Walter Pincus and David Corn tracked down everything you wanted to know about how dirty John Bolton can be.