Man, just catching up since posting the Time's article last night...and I think our friend PB might be deranged. [Insert irrelevant emoji of your choice].
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-defe ... lewebshare
Mr. Bolton wrote in a draft of his forthcoming book that the president told him in August that he wanted to freeze foreign aid to Ukraine until the country aided investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
Mr. Bolton’s claim goes to the heart of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry and contradicts the White House’s argument that the decision to hold up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine wasn’t related to the president’s push for investigations there. Democrats have said the president abused his power by leveraging aid approved by Congress to get a foreign leader to undertake actions that would benefit him politically.
Mr. Trump early Monday denied Mr. Bolton’s allegations.
“I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens,” the president wrote on Twitter shortly after midnight. “In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”
The president noted that he had released the aid to Ukraine in September without any announcement of an investigation, a move he took after the freeze became public.
Inside the White House, Mr. Trump’s attorneys were considering retooling their arguments to address the question of whether the Senate should seek testimony from Mr. Bolton and others, according to people familiar with the planning.
Among other lines, they may argue that the Justice Department quickly disputed Mr. Bolton’s account of sharing concerns about the Ukraine matter with Attorney General William Barr, and that the Senate should focus on evidence already vetted in the House’s impeachment process, the people said.
White House officials said they heard from concerned senators and their aides throughout Sunday evening about Mr. Bolton’s book, many of them inquiring how long the White House had known what it alleged. Some of those administration officials predicted the uproar would subside in the coming days. Many Trump administration officials are accustomed to shocking headlines related to the White House that bring intense bursts of pressure only to fade as other issues arise.
Senate Republicans, including Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina canceled a news conference that had been planned ahead of Monday’s trial session, pivoting to Twitter to make a case for witnesses favored by the Trump administration should Democrats succeed in winning enough support to subpoena Mr. Bolton and others to testify.
Mr. Graham said on Twitter that “if there is a desire and decision by the Senate to call Democratic witnesses, then at a minimum the Senate should allow President @realDonaldTrump to call all relevant witnesses he has requested.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) said in a statement Monday that the reports about Mr. Bolton’s book “strengthen the case for witnesses” and had “prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues.” Ms. Collins is one of a handful of Republicans who had previously said she was open to witnesses."
