WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump told his national security adviser he wanted to maintain a freeze on military assistance to Ukraine until it launched political investigations into his Democratic rivals, according to a report in The New York Times on Sunday.
The newspaper said John Bolton's description of his exchange with Trump appears in drafts of a book. The revelation challenges the defense offered up by Trump and his attorneys in his Senate impeachment trial and raises the stakes as the chamber decides this week whether to seek sworn testimony from Bolton and other witnesses.
Bolton, who acrimoniously left the White House a day before Trump ultimately released the Ukraine aid on Sept. 11, has already told lawmakers that he is willing to testify, despite the president's order barring aides from cooperating in the probe.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment Sunday night. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has played a prominent role in the Ukraine affair, replied to a request for comment with a text: "I used to like and respect John and tell people they were wrong about how irresponsible he was. I was wrong."
Trump's impeachment trial enters its second week as his defense team is scheduled to resume its case today. Senators face a critical vote on whether to hear witnesses or proceed directly to a vote that is widely expected to end in his acquittal. The articles of impeachment charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
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DEMOCRATS RESPOND
Democrats need at least four Republicans to vote with them to seek witness testimony. Those prospects looked unlikely in recent days and it's unclear whether the new revelations about Bolton's book will sway any GOP senators.
Democrats, however, quickly sought to ramp up the pressure on their Republican counterparts.
"John Bolton has the evidence," tweeted Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. "It's up to four Senate Republicans to ensure that John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, and the others with direct knowledge of President Trump's actions testify in the Senate trial."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no immediate comment, according to his office.
Bolton's account was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the manuscript on the condition of anonymity to discuss the book, The Room Where It Happened, ahead of its release March 17.
The book had been submitted to the White House for prepublication review, which is standard for the work of former officials with security clearances.
The book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, declined to comment.
Sarah Tinsley, an adviser to Bolton, said: "The ambassador's manuscript was transmitted to the White House in hard copy several weeks ago for prepublication review by the NSC. The ambassador has not passed the draft manuscript to anyone else. Period."
Bolton attorney Charles J. Cooper said in a statement that the prepublication review process had been "corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript."
Multiple people described Bolton's account of the Ukraine affair to The Times.
The book presents an outline of what Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the prepublication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book's publication or omit key passages.
Over dozens of pages, Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president's private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior Cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.
For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Bolton wrote.
Bolton also said that after the president's July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William Barr his concerns about Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Barr denied that he learned of the call from Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.
And Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Bolton wrote. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.
In recent days, some White House officials have described Bolton as a disgruntled former employee, and have said he took notes that he should have left behind when he departed the administration.
Trump told reporters last week that he did not want Bolton to testify and said that even if he simply spoke out publicly, he could damage national security.
"The problem with John is it's a national security problem," Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. "He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it's not very positive?"
"It's going to make the job very hard," he added.
TRUMP TARGETS SCHIFF
Earlier Sunday, Trump escalated his attacks on Rep. Adam Schiff, issuing what appears to be a veiled threat against the California Democrat.
"Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man," Trump tweeted Sunday morning. "He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!"
Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is the lead impeachment manager in the Senate trial.
Schiff responded in an interview on NBC News' Meet the Press, saying he believes Trump's remarks were intended as a threat.
"This is a wrathful and vindictive president; I don't think there's any doubt about it," Schiff said in the interview. "And if you think there is, look at the president's tweets about me today, saying that I should 'pay a price.'"
"Do you take that as a threat?" host Chuck Todd asked.
"I think it's intended to be," Schiff replied.
Trump's targeting of Schiff comes as the president's attorneys are readying to mount an aggressive defense today.
In a two-hour presentation on Saturday, members of Trump's legal team argued that the president had valid reasons for withholding the aid to Ukraine, and it sought to plant doubts about both the prosecutors' case and Schiff.
Democrats contend that Trump has continued to publicly solicit foreign interference in U.S. elections and that the integrity of the 2020 race is at risk. The president fired back Sunday by leveling the same accusation at his political opponents.
"The Impeachment Hoax is a massive election interference the likes of which has never been seen before," he said in a tweet.
Some Republicans on Sunday defended Trump's remarks about Schiff. In an interview on CNN's State of the Union, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he was not troubled by Trump's declaration that Schiff "has not paid the price."
"I don't think it's a death threat. I don't think he's encouraging a death threat," Lankford said.
Host Jake Tapper responded by saying that "people who are supporters of the president have heard his rhetoric and then actually tried to bomb and kill politicians and the media."
This prompted Lankford to refer to the 2017 congressional baseball shooting that targeted Republicans and injured several people, including House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La.
"So to be able to say the president's trying to be able to spur this on would be able to say Democrats were trying to spur on the killing" of Republicans, Lankford said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who is also an impeachment manager, called Trump's tweet about Schiff "absolutely unfortunate" and said the president has said "things that seem threatening to people" in the past.
"He really ought to get a grip and be a little more presidential," she said on State of the Union.
In a tweet later Sunday morning, Trump also took aim at Todd, accusing the Meet the Press host of holding a "softball interview" with Schiff and "never even calling Shifty out on his fraudulent statement to Congress, where he made up ALL of the words of my conversation with the Ukrainian President!"
Both sides continue to spar over the question of whether the Senate trial will include witnesses. Some key Senate Republicans, already hesitant on the issue, became even more so over the weekend after Schiff referred to a CBS News report in which an anonymous Trump ally was quoted as having warned lawmakers, 'Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.'"
Several of those GOP senators -- including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine -- have criticized Schiff for referencing the report, maintaining that the White House has not threatened them to vote against calling witnesses.
Schiff on Sunday defended his remarks, arguing that they weren't personal and were intended simply to highlight the challenge for Republican senators in demonstrating "moral courage to stand up to this president."
"I want to acknowledge that, and I don't want to acknowledge it in a way that is offensive to them, but I do want to speak candidly about it," he said. "And if this weren't an issue, there wouldn't be an issue about calling witnesses. If we can't even get the senators to agree to call witnesses in a trial, it shows you just how difficult that moral courage is."
NO 'IRRELEVANT' WITNESSES
On Meet the Press, Schiff also appeared to play down the significance of a potential Senate vote to acquit Trump, arguing that such a vote would be meaningless if no witnesses are allowed to be called.
"They don't really contest the president's scheme. ... They just tried to make the case that you don't need a fair trial here; you can make this go away," Schiff said of the president's legal team. "But, look, if they're successful of depriving the country of a fair trial, there is no exoneration."
Schiff said Trump's legal team has the right to call witnesses but not "irrelevant" ones such as Biden's son Hunter.
"It's not a question of what I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid of anything. It's a question of: Should the trial be used as a vehicle to smear his opponent ... or is it to get to the truth?" Schiff said.
The gist of the Trump team's arguments, as put forward in various legal briefs and consistent with the president's public statements, is that Democrats are attempting to overturn the 2016 election and interfere in November's ballot.
"They're asking you to do something that no Senate has ever done and they're asking you to do it with no evidence," White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Saturday.
Harvard Law emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's impeachment team, claimed Sunday that impeaching Trump based on the charges brought by the House would be unconstitutional because in his view, the charges do not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
"Much of what was presented by the Democrats were not impeachable offenses -- they were campaign ads designed to try to show that you should vote for a different candidate," Dershowitz said on Fox News Sunday, adding: "That's fine. Let's put it up to the voters."
Dershowitz is expected to argue today on the Senate floor that the two articles represent "vague, open-ended criteria" rather than impeachable offenses. He also argues that the framers of the Constitution would agree with him, a claim that is disputed by Democrats and other legal scholars.
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times; Felicia Sonmez and Elise Viebeck of The Washington Post; Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Laurie Kellman and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; Ros Krasny, Hailey Waller, Steve Geimann, Todd Shields and Katia Dmitrieva of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/27/2020