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Bolton manuscript claims tied Ukraine aid to investigations
Summary
A look back at the unpublished account of a conversation with President Donald Trump that surfaced as the Ukraine scandal continued.
What did the US president tell his national security adviser about military aid to Ukraine? On 27 January 2020, that question dominated coverage after reports on an unpublished manuscript by John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, the day before, on 26 January.
The manuscript, for Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened, reportedly said that President Donald Trump told him that unfreezing military aid to Ukraine depended on Ukraine carrying out investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
Why it mattered
The account bore directly on the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Biden, which could have damaged Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Trump had blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package, in an attempt to obtain 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 claim linked the frozen aid explicitly to the investigations, which is the connection at the heart of the scandal.
