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What Bolton's manuscript said about Ukraine aid
Summary
A retrospective on the reports surrounding John Bolton's unpublished manuscript, as the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal continued.
What did the former National Security Advisor's unpublished book say about military aid to Ukraine? On 30 January 2020, that question was still in the news, following a report dated 26 January 2020 about the manuscript of John Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened.
As reported, the manuscript revealed that President Donald Trump told Bolton that unfreezing military aid to Ukraine was conditional on Ukraine carrying out investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
The wider scandal
The claim bore directly on the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That affair arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Biden, and so potentially to damage Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
As later described, Trump blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package in an attempt 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 account tied the aid directly to the investigations, which is why it drew attention in the closing days of January 2020.
