Home › Security › What Bolton's manuscript said about Ukraine aid
What Bolton's manuscript said about Ukraine aid
Summary
A look back at the reporting on an unpublished manuscript that linked frozen military aid to Ukraine with demands for investigations.
What did John Bolton's unpublished manuscript say about military aid to Ukraine? By 28 January 2020, the question was drawing attention, following reports dated 26 January 2020 on the contents of the draft of his book, The Room Where It Happened. Bolton was the former National Security Advisor.
According to those reports, 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 account bore directly on what became known as the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate Biden, his political rival, in a way that could damage Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
The aid in question was a congressionally mandated package of $400 million in military assistance. Trump blocked payment of it, in what was described as 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 reported contents added a first-hand account of the president's own stated condition for releasing the aid, as relayed by a senior security official who had worked beside him.
