Sen. Lindsey Graham said that even if allegations in former national security adviser John Bolton’s memoir are true, President Trump still should not be removed from office.
Graham, 64, explained his stance on the Bolton book allegations in a Twitter thread Wednesday while asserting that no witnesses were needed in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.
“It is my opinion, based on the law and facts, that additional testimony is unnecessary in this case,” wrote Graham, a South Carolina Republican and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.”
For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 29, 2020
Graham issued the statement after news broke on Sunday that Bolton’s unpublished book alleges that Trump told Bolton that Ukraine would not receive U.S. military aid unless the foreign power opened investigations into potentially corrupt behavior by Democrats.
The South Carolina senator has been one of the president’s most vocal supporters throughout the impeachment fight, consistently pointing to conflicts of interest between former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter to justify the investigations Trump asked Ukraine to take up.
“It is clear to me that there is ample evidence for the President to be concerned about conflicts of interest on behalf of Hunter Biden and that Vice President Joe Biden’s failure to take appropriate action was unacceptable,” Graham tweeted.
“The House managers’ claim that the sole reason President Trump temporarily paused the aid was purely personal and political, not public, does not withstand scrutiny,” he continued.
The House managers’ claim that the sole reason President Trump temporarily paused the aid was purely personal and political, not public, does not withstand scrutiny.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 29, 2020
Hunter Biden, 49, joined the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, in April 2014 with no prior experience working in the sector. Joe Biden, then vice president to President Barack Obama, was overseeing U.S. relations with Ukraine and pressured the country to fire its then-chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely seen as corrupt. Shokin had allegedly been considering launching a corruption investigation into Burisma before he was fired in March 2016.
Hunter Biden has a history of alcoholism and drug abuse. He has entered rehab for his addictions several times and was dismissed from the Navy in February 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
