President Donald Trump early Monday denied he told his former national security adviser John Bolton that aid to Ukraine was tied into any investigations of Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
"I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens," Trump tweeted 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."
Trump's comments come after The New York Times reported Sunday that Bolton claims in a manuscript of his upcoming book that Trump's hold on Ukraine aid was linked to demands for an investigation on Joe Biden and other Democrats.
The Times reported that Bolton's book has several dozen pages about the Ukraine matter, including claims that Trump told him last August that the $391 million in military assistance would remain on hold until Ukraine agreed to investigate the Bidens.
Trump was impeached following a whistleblower's report about a telephone call between himself and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last July, during which Trump indicated the Bidens were corrupt and should be investigated.
The president, in his trio of tweets early Monday, insisted that the "transcripts of my calls with President Zelensky are all the proof that is needed," referring to a call record, which was not a verbatim transcript, declassified and released by the White House after the whistleblower's report surfaced.
The document should be considered "in addition to the fact that President Zelensky & the Foreign Minister of Ukraine said there was no pressure and no problems," Trump said. "Additionally, I met with President Zelensky at the United Nations (Democrats said I never met) and released the military aid to Ukraine without any conditions or investigations - and far ahead of schedule," he tweeted. "I also allowed Ukraine to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles. My Administration has done far more than the previous Administration."
Bolton's lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, has blamed the White House for disclosing the book's contents, saying Sunday that it is "clear, regrettably, from The New York Times article published today that the pre-publication review process has been corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript."
Cooper said he gave a copy of Bolton's book to the White House on Dec. 30, 12 days after Trump was impeached, so that it could be reviewed for classified information.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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