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What Bolton's manuscript said about Ukraine aid
Summary
A look back at the reported content of an unpublished manuscript that tied frozen military aid to Ukraine to investigations of Trump's political rivals.
What did a former US national security adviser say about the freezing of military aid to Ukraine? On 29 January 2020, that question was at the centre of the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal, after reports on 26 January described the unpublished manuscript of John Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened.
According to the manuscript, as reported, President Donald Trump told Bolton that unfreezing the military aid to Ukraine depended on Ukraine carrying out investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Bolton was the former National Security Advisor.
The wider scandal
The scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate Biden, his political rival in the race for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Trump enlisted surrogates in and outside his administration, including his 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 characterised, was to obtain cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in return. 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 linked the aid directly to the investigations, which made it a significant point of reference in the continuing debate over the affair.
