Trump denies telling Bolton Ukraine aid tied to probes

President Donald Trump on Monday pushed back on a firsthand account from his former national security adviser, John Bolton, about tying military aid for a foreign ally to his own personal agenda, as senators consider the president’s future in the Oval Office.

“I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens,” Trump wrote just after midnight, referring to allegations regarding former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

In an unpublished manuscript of his upcoming book, Bolton described the White House decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine until he left the White House in September. As national security adviser, Bolton would have been involved in many of the high-level discussions about Ukraine.

Bolton’s account directly undercuts one of Trump’s defense arguments, that the frozen funding was not connected to his petitioning of Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to help him in the 2020 presidential election by announcing an anti-corruption investigation into the Bidens.

The new details come at a time when senators approach making a final decision — possibly by the end of the week — on whether to allow new evidence and new witnesses, like Bolton, to be introduced in Trump’s trial in the Senate.

Bolton’s potentially explosive details about Trump’s motivations for freezing the military aid could provide the impetus that might potentially sway some Republican senators to reconsider hearing new testimony.

Bolton’s lawyer blamed the White House for the disclosure of the book’s contents, which Bolton submitted for a standard security review 12 days after the House impeached Trump.

By Monday morning, some Republican senators had reached out to the White House, pressing for who had visibility into Bolton’s manuscript as the Senate trial unfolded a week earlier.

In his manuscript, Bolton describes an effort, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, to push Trump to release the aid. Bolton said he also spoke with Attorney General William Barr about his concerns over the parallel diplomacy with Ukraine led by the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Barr, whom Trump mentioned in his July phone call with Zelenskiy, has tried to distance himself from Giuliani and the Ukraine matter.

Bolton, who has said he would testify at the Senate trial if he were subpoenaed, wrote in the manuscript that Pompeo told him privately that there was no basis to criticize the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie Yovanovitch. Career diplomats have testified that there was no justification to fire Yovanovitch. Giuliani and two of his associates had been pushing Trump to fire her since the spring of 2018.