No matter how many times CNN refers to the new report about John Bolton as a “bombshell,” it doesn’t change that everything we need to know about President Trump, Ukraine, and the delay in foreign aid, we already know and have known for a month.
Calling in Bolton to testify to the Senate that Trump has a long-standing grudge against Ukraine sheds precisely no new light on anything.
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The New York Times on Sunday said that it has spoken with people who reviewed the manuscript of Bolton’s forthcoming book about his time as national security adviser in the White House. Without directly quoting a single thing from the manuscript, the New York Times reported this:
He, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had collectively pressed the president about releasing the aid nearly a dozen times in the preceding weeks after lower-level officials who worked on Ukraine issues began complaining about the holdup, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Trump had effectively rebuffed them, airing his longstanding grievances about Ukraine, which mixed legitimate efforts by some Ukrainians to back his Democratic 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, with unsupported accusations and outright conspiracy theories about the country, a key American ally.
Guess what. This information is already part of the public record. The New York Times itself was the one to report it on Dec. 29.
The report from Sunday also said that last year in August, according to Bolton, the president told him that he “preferred” giving no assistance to Ukraine “until” the government there turned over any materials they had about Joe Biden and the country’s involvement in the 2016 election.
Wow, that sounds like a quid pro quo! Except there are no quotes in the article to make more clear what it means that Trump “preferred” not sending assistance “until” Ukraine handed over information on Biden and the country’s involvement in the 2016 election.
I would have preferred the New York Times not have reported this story until it contained direct quotes from Bolton’s manuscript. That’s not a quid pro quo. That’s a wish.
Democrats say the new information, if you can call it that, shows why Bolton should testify in the impeachment trial. It doesn’t. We already know what he’s going to say. The same goes for White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who Democrats also want to testify because he’s a “first-hand witness” to events.
But guess what, again, Mulvaney has already given his version of events and taken questions related to it. He did it during his marathon press conference. He said what “drove” the decision to delay the aid to Ukraine was concern over “corruption” (legitimate and true) and that, yes, they did have concerns that if the congressionally approved aid was not spent, they may end up in violation of the impoundment law.
None of these facts are disputed. What’s disputed is the conclusion Democrats are reaching — that a delay in foreign aid for a political reason is worthy of removal from office.
These two things can be true at once: Trump delayed the aid to Ukraine so he could talk to the country’s leader about investigating Joe Biden and the 2016 election, and there is no proof that Ukraine would not have received the aid without committing to the investigation.
The proof is to the contrary. Ukraine has never said it’s investigating Biden or 2016 and yet it received the aid that was approved by Congress.
We know all of this already, and it doesn’t become scarier just because CNN has thrown itself on a “bombshell.”
