John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former White House national security adviser, said on Tuesday that he had helped plan attempted coups in foreign countries.

Bolton made the remarks to CNN after the day’s congressional hearing into the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The panel’s lawmakers on Tuesday accused former President Donald Trump of inciting the violence in a last-ditch bid to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, VOA reported.

Speaking to CNN, however, Bolton suggested Trump was not competent enough to pull off a “carefully planned coup d’état,” later adding: “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état — not here but you know [in] other places — it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he [Trump] did.”

In 2019, Bolton as national security adviser publicly supported Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s call for the military to back his effort to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was illegitimate. Ultimately Maduro remained in power, VOA reported.

“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me [beyond Venezuela],” the CNN anchor said, prompting a reply from Bolton: “I’m sure there is.”

Many foreign policy experts have over the years criticized Washington’s history of interventions in other countries, from its role in the 1953 overthrowing of then Iranian nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Vietnam war, to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan this century, VOA reported.

But it is highly unusual for U.S. officials to openly acknowledge their role in stoking unrest in foreign countries.

“John Bolton, who’s served in highest positions in the U.S. government, including UN ambassador, casually boasting about he’s helped plan coups in other countries,” Dickens Olewe, a BBC journalist from Kenya, wrote on Twitter.