Bolton book alleges Trump tied Ukraine aid freeze to Biden investigations: NYT
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Multiple sources familiar with Bolton's writings told The New York Times that Bolton writes that President Trump personally told him that $391 million in aid to Ukraine should be frozen until Ukrainian officials announced the investigations, including one into the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The book, which does not have a publishing date as of yet, has been submitted to the White House for review. White House officials did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill on the report.
The report comes as the Senate has debated for days over whether to allow witnesses in Trump's ongoing impeachment trial beyond those that spoke to House investigators in past months.
Bolton left the White House last year, with the president and his former aide disagreeing publicly at the time over whether he was fired or resigned. The claim in his upcoming book revealed Sunday directly contradicts statements from Trump and other administration officials, who have denied that aid to Ukraine was ever tied to the president's efforts to convince Ukraine's president to open investigations.
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Code Red Code Red
engage all responsibility avoidance mechanisms on the blimp DJT.
Emergency !
Bolton was supposed to be an American Patriot, WTF !
Get your ass out there and tell US what you know about using a handgrenade to get through a drug deal to get a leg up on your likely opponents, again WTF Bolton, show US the MONEY
No worries. Trump barely knew the guy. He may have gotten coffee for them once or twice.
Whoever buys the stream of kiss-and-tell books are paying authors to make wilder claims and the used Fords of the bombshell tactic get their fifteen minutes.
Still voting for no witnesses, are ya?
Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says
WASHINGTON — President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.
The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense : that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.
Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial , the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account of the Ukraine affair.
The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages.
Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.
For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.
Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.
And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.
During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton.
Charles J. Cooper, a lawyer for Mr. Bolton, declined to comment. The White House did not provide responses to questions about Mr. Bolton’s assertions, and representatives for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Bolton’s submission of the book to the White House may have given the White House lawyers direct insight into what Mr. Bolton would say if he were called to testify at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial. It also intensified concerns among some of his advisers that they needed to block Mr. Bolton from testifying, according to two people familiar with their concerns.
The White House has ordered Mr. Bolton and other key officials with firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Bolton said in a statement this month that he would testify if subpoenaed.
In recent days, some White House officials have described Mr. Bolton as a disgruntled former employee, and have said he took notes that he should have left behind when he departed the administration.
Mr. Trump told reporters last week that he did not want Mr. Bolton to testify and said that even if he simply spoke out publicly, he could damage national security.
“The problem with John is it’s a national security problem,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive?”
“It’s going to make the job very hard,” he added.
The Senate impeachment trial could end as early as Friday without witness testimony. Democrats in both the House and Senate have pressed for weeks to include any new witnesses and documents that did not surface during the House impeachment hearings to be fair, focusing on persuading the handful of Republican senators they would need to join them to succeed.
But a week into the trial, most lawmakers say the chances of 51 senators agreeing to call witnesses are dwindling , not growing.
Mr. Bolton would like to testify for several reasons, according to associates. He believes he has relevant information, and he has also expressed concern that if his account of the Ukraine affair emerges only after the trial, he will be accused of holding back to increase his book sales.
Mr. Bolton, 71, a fixture in conservative national security circles since his days in the Reagan administration, joined the White House in 2018 after several people recommended him to the president, including the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.
But Mr. Bolton and Mr. Trump soured on each other over several global crises, including Iranian aggression, Mr. Trump’s posture toward Russia and, ultimately, the Ukraine matter. Mr. Bolton was also often at odds with Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney throughout his time in the administration.
Key to Mr. Bolton’s account about Ukraine is an exchange during a meeting in August with the president after Mr. Trump returned from vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Mr. Bolton raised the $391 million in congressionally appropriated assistance to Ukraine for its war in the country’s east against Russian-backed separatists. Officials had frozen the aid, and a deadline was looming to begin sending it to Kyiv, Mr. Bolton noted.
He, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had collectively pressed the president about releasing the aid nearly a dozen times in the preceding weeks after lower-level officials who worked on Ukraine issues began complaining about the holdup, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Trump had effectively rebuffed them, airing his longstanding grievances about Ukraine, which mixed legitimate efforts by some Ukrainians to back his Democratic 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, with unsupported accusations and outright conspiracy theories about the country, a key American ally.
Mr. Giuliani had also spent months stoking the president’s paranoia about the American ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie L. Yovanovitch, claiming that she was openly anti-Trump and needed to be dismissed. Mr. Trump had ordered her removed as early as April 2018 during a private dinner with two Giuliani associates and others, a recording of the conversation made public on Saturday showed.
In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.
Mr. Bolton also described other key moments in the pressure campaign, including Mr. Pompeo’s private acknowledgment to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch had no basis and that Mr. Giuliani may have wanted her removed because she might have been targeting his clients who had dealings in Ukraine as she sought to fight corruption.
Ms. Yovanovitch, a Canadian immigrant whose parents fled the Soviet Union and Nazis, was a well-regarded career diplomat who was known as a vigorous fighter against corruption in Ukraine. She was abruptly removed last year and told the president had lost trust in her, even though a boss assured her she had “done nothing wrong.”
Mr. Bolton also said he warned White House lawyers that Mr. Giuliani might have been leveraging his work with the president to help his private clients .
At the impeachment trial, Mr. Trump himself had hoped to have his defense call a range of people to testify who had nothing to do with his efforts related to Ukraine, including Hunter Biden, to frame the case around Democrats. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, repeatedly told the president that witnesses could backfire, and the White House has followed his lead.
Mr. McConnell and other Republicans in the Senate, working in tandem with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, have spent weeks waging their own rhetorical battle to keep their colleagues within the party tent on the question of witnesses, with apparent success. Two of the four Republican senators publicly open to witness votes have sounded notes of skepticism in recent days about the wisdom of having the Senate compel testimony that the House did not get.
Since Mr. Bolton’s statement, White House advisers have floated the possibility that they could go to court to try to obtain a restraining order to stop him from speaking. Such an order would be unprecedented, but any attempt to secure it could succeed in tying up his testimony in legal limbo and scaring off Republican moderates wary of letting the trial drag on when its outcome appears clear.
Bolton's observations matter not all. The 'fix' is in. Putin still needs more and the GOP will acquiesce to those needs.
Yeah I'm not going to buy the book.
i'm not buying it
What is the last book you bought and read?
Carsick by John Waters. It was recommended by Hal.
i must confess, it's been like a decade since i bought and read a book, as it is a bit embarrassing.
though i like to sometimes write even if i do it wrong,i'm not a big reader.
This site is where i do most of my reading, unless following up on something.
i tend to prefer actual social interaction, wherever beer and spirits are accessible.
That explains a lot
That explains even more
Okay .... maybe there is hope for you after all .....
well since i;m just a self uneducated illiterate limited reader, feel free to put me in my place...
.
ah fck it, i'm headed there now anyway.
ill stay till i make happy hour mellon collie again.
$3.50 Peroni talls at Bdubs on me. You just have to get to Northern Michigan
beleive we would have a fckn blast, as i do most "wherever i may roam", but, that's a long way for a cold one,
reign check
No problem, i've always been good at contributing to the delinquency of a minor ..... especially when i was one ...
i majored in minoring when i dreamed i went to college...
woke up a canary, but i can't sing, but i would like to find someone who could Finally Corrupt Me, More than I they, cause it hasn't happened up to this day.
Perhaps, you could read me a book ,that ,
i wrote...
wrong, as it is my right.
Of course he does and of course Trump did...
It is all gonna come out. Why not start now?
Those famous "sources" again. Unidentified, unsubstantiated, unbelievable, except by the left.
Ukraine is a key US ally. Since when? They are so key that Obama would not give them any military aid after he backed a coup of a duly elected government. They are so key that Obama and NATO allowed Russia to annex Crimea.
But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!!!
Maybe the Democrats should have allowed the courts to do their job getting Trump administration officials to testify; instead of using second and third hand information, in closed door setting where they picked and chose what information to leak. All Trump's defense team did was play the rest of the interviews- and it poked holes in everything they claimed. Sorry, the Senate will not be fixing the House's fuck up.
As for Marie L. Yovanovitch, both she and the left better reread what she stated once Obama took office a few thousand times so it sinks in.
Seems that only the power of the presidency is allowed when there is a D behind their name. When it is an R every decision needs to be questioned and investigated.
You want corruption look at all of the Democrats that have relatives and friends of the family working for Ukrainian oil companies.
But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!!
How about the Democrats clean up their own corruption for a change?
Everyone in America knows Trump is guilty.
It isnt about Trump any longer, it's about the rest of us.
That, is exactly right.
I am thinking about writing an article here about this aspect - Trump supporters , both in the Senate and on main street, are falling into a very disturbing line - that Trump must be defended at all costs, even the cost of adherence to common sense and reality.
I heard a few minutes ago that the Republican senator Joni Ernst was asked if the new information from Bolton means she would like to hear from him and other witnesses at the trial, and she said "no", that the House Democrats could have called him.
So essentially, she would be someone who knows that there is very likely , in existence, first hand evidence of Trump's guilt, but she doesn't care, she will support Trump no matter what.
We are getting much closer to this being the case for every Trump supporter, and it will profoundly disturb if not change this country for a long time to come. Political loyalty will no longer be tethered to an identifiable reality.
Yeah, good idea John.
I mean that pesky Constitution and established law right?
Why let that get int the way of a good leftist meltdown?
Before Donald trump existed as a politician, there were many constitutional scholars who disagree with what Dershowitz will say today.
Why is Dershowitz the last word on this? Because you want Trump to get off?
No one said he was the last word but much to your chagrin he has a word and take it to the bank.
That word is a hell of a lot more educated than the words being typed here.
Cash it
But is his word consistent? Or is he a partisan hack who's opinion changes depending on whether the defendant has an "R" or "D" after their name?
Partisan hack? We aren't talking Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi or Nadler. Now there are some partisan hacks
I'll take his well informed and unbiased word over theirs any day. Unlike those DC swamp creatures, he has no dog in the hunt.
Partisan or otherwise.
Which one of his?
This is going nowhere but i'll play your game one time. I'll go with current, up to date Dershowitz.
Are you going with today Schumer or 1998-99 Schumer?
Which one?
And his being a hypocrite doesn't bother you because his current claim matches what you want it to be. Understood.
Yeah, like i thought, no answer. Run away now!
If that had a modicum of truth to it i might be bothered but since it doesn't, i will continue my straightforward and candid approach to NT.
Have a nice day!
Wow, completely ignored the 2 videos I posted above with him arguing both sides.
Nope, try again. I answered your question
But WOW! You still haven't answered mine.
SOSDD considering .....
You never asked one.
You have to read it first, to have a chance at comprehending it.
7.1.9
I delete my spam email, so you will have to explain Schumer versus Schumer, and why I should give a crap while you're at it.
Lol ... did you delete your ability to google?
Okay, i'll give you a break since you probably weren't alive for it.
Mine was a reference to how Schumer handled the Clinton impeachment. His stance was quite different than today.
Hypocritical, partisan politics at its worst .... the guy is a snake. Nothing more, nothing less.
Why would I want to Google right wing aluminum hat conspiracy theories?
And yet you seem unable to document anything except your own claim? What's wrong? Can't you Google exact quotes?
I didn't ask you to, so i have no idea why you would want to do that either.
Lol .... don't be lazy ..... you can do it .... i know you can ........... that said, its common knowledge to any person who seeks a well rounded, unbiased knowledge of previous impeachments and how that knowledge may apply today. Perhaps your public education failed you in that regard.
But if you finish your homework, you get a cookie.
So, you got nothing. Making shit up and unable to back it up with any factual links. Okay.
Nah but we have figured out that you're intellectually lazy
Not the end of the world though. Lots of people here are like that.
That's all he and his fellow tRump supporters have
I think he wants me to search through all the right wing nut job websites and try to find something, anything, so he can claim that he didn't just make all the shit himself. Apparently he hasn't been able to find anything himself.
Lol ...... Google is a "right wing" nut job site now?
Hilarious!
Resorting to lies now?