Daily US Times, New York: Democrats again demanded to have former national security adviser John Bolton testify in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump after The New York Times published a report Sunday.
The New York Times report said Trump told Bolton he wished to withhold military aid in order to pressure Ukraine into helping with politically motivated investigations.
New York Times reported citing people who have seen the manuscript of John Bolton. The manuscript says, according to the people that Trump directly and explicitly told him in August that he wished to withhold the $391 million in military aid to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated until officials there turned over documents related to the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden.
According to Amazon, Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is set to publish on March 17. The time was set after the New York Times report published.
In the US Senate, President Trump’s impeachment trial is currently going on. The House already impeached him on articles of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The trial is centered on that withholding of aid and his refusal to allow current and former officials, such as Bolton, to testify in the impeachment inquiry.
Trump has been denying any wrongdoings. His denial continues after the Times report as well.
Following the report, Trump posted a series of tweets early Monday. He denied he never told Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.
“In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book”, he tweets.
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudi Guliani also slammed Bolton in Twitter. He said there is no way the president would say this to John Bolton.
“It’s a shame that a man will sacrifice his integrity to make a few bucks on a book. No wonder he accomplished so little as National Security Advisor”, Guliani wrote in Twitter.
Trump’s legal team opened its defense of the president in the Senate trial on Saturday. Bolton’s claim would appear to undercut two of their key arguments: that Trump’s order to delay the funds was not about the investigations and that no one has directly tied him to any such scheme.
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