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What the Bolton manuscript said about Ukraine aid
Summary
A retrospective on the reported claim that frozen military aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
What did an unpublished manuscript reveal about military aid for Ukraine? On 27 January 2020, the question was at the centre of the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal, a day after reports emerged about the draft of former National Security Advisor John Bolton's book, The Room Where It Happened.
According to those reports, dated 26 January 2020, the manuscript said President Donald Trump told Bolton that unfreezing military aid to Ukraine depended on Ukraine carrying out investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
The wider scandal
The scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Biden, potentially damaging Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Trump enlisted surrogates inside and outside his administration, including personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, to pressure Ukraine and other governments.
Trump had blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package. The aim, as the scandal was later described, was to obtain quid pro quo cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government culminated in a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
The manuscript's account, as reported, linked the frozen aid directly to the investigations, which is why it drew attention on 27 January 2020.
