In an unpublished draft, he says Trump tied Ukrainian military aid to investigations.
We’re sending a special edition of the Impeachment Briefing tonight to tell you about some significant news that The Times broke tonight: A draft of John Bolton’s new book contains an explosive account on Ukraine that could change the impeachment trial. |
In an unpublished manuscript of John Bolton’s forthcoming book, the former national security adviser said that President Trump told him firsthand that he wanted to continue freezing military aid to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. |
During a conversation in August with Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolton mentioned his concern over the delay of $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine. Mr. Trump replied that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation related to former Vice President Joe Biden and supporters of Hillary Clinton in Ukraine. (Mr. Trump frequently lumps together the law enforcement officials who investigated his campaign’s ties to Russia with Democrats and other perceived enemies, as he appeared to do with Mr. Bolton.) |
Mr. Bolton said that he warned White House lawyers that Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, might have been leveraging his work with the president to help his private clients. And he said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo privately acknowledged to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Marie Yovanovitch, then the ambassador to Ukraine, had no basis. |
What does this mean for impeachment? |
Mr. Bolton had been near the top of the list of witnesses Democrats wanted to hear from in the impeachment trial, and the new revelations have only intensified that: House managers said in a statement on Sunday night that “there can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.” |
Democrats would need support from a handful of Republicans in the Senate in order to call witnesses. Before this news broke, most lawmakers said the chances of 51 senators agreeing to call witnesses were dwindling, not growing. Several moderate Republicans have said that they would wait until the conclusion of opening arguments and the question-and-answer round of the trial — likely by the end of the week — to decide on whether to support such a move. |
Why are these revelations such a big deal? |
Here’s what my colleague Mike Schmidt, one of the reporters of the story, told me: |
| “Until this point, Mr. Bolton had been signaling that he had something to say, but we didn’t know what he was going to say. It didn’t sound like a hollow promise, but it certainly was one that you didn’t know what was behind Door No. 1. Now there’s some significant meat on the bone. |
| Mr. Bolton was in this highly unusual situation where, if he wasn’t going to testify and it was going to come out in a book, people were going to say, ‘What the heck, where was this important information when there was an impeachment investigation?’ The fact that there’s a book coming has a lot of people alarmed." |
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