John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration, said Tuesday he’s previously helped plan coups in other countries.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Bolton argued that the January 6, 2021 riot in Washington fell short of such efforts.

He rejected the notion that the Capitol riot was a “carefully planned coup” by former President Trump.

“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton said. “It’s rambling from one … idea to another, one plan that falls through, and another comes up.”

“Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol. As to that, there’s no doubt,” the former US ambassador to the United Nations asserted.

“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but, you know, other places, it takes a lot of work,” he said.

Bolton — who served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 — did not specify which governments he had helped to overthrow, but while in his post, he advocated for US military intervention in Venezuela.

He noted that he’d written in his book about efforts in Venezuela to end Nicolas Maduro’s regime that “turned out not to be successful — not that we had all that much to do with it.”

“But I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed,” Bolton said.

“The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable.”

Source: Agencies