As the impeachment trial continues, more information about President Donald Trump’s activities resurface. The biggest revelation of all came from former national security advisor John Bolton due to his manuscript, which may have been leaked to the media by the White House themselves.
The manuscript of Bolton’s book revealed a major element in what may have transpired during the height of the Ukraine scandal. Politicalflare reports that neither Bolton nor the publisher provided anyone else copies of the manuscript except for the career professionals in the White House for them to review in case classified material was mentioned. Bolton and the publisher have already insisted that they were not the ones who provided a copy to the media, as they will undoubtedly face serious legal complications if the leak was revealed to be false information.
With that in mind, the leak may have come from the White House staff themselves, who supposedly only got one copy from the publisher. However, it can be said that the White House staff may have copied the manuscript multiple times, which may somehow lead to the leaked information. Trump himself may have wanted to know what was going to be in the book, and thus had everyone in his staff to read it. Another thing to note that if the White House leaked the information, it would also mean that someone within the staff can confirm Trump’s actions based on the leaks, and will ultimately give the Democrats more ammunition to use against the President to win the trial.
Trump is being tried for impeachment at the Senate for charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress due to the Ukraine scandal. This would be the third time in US history that a president was to be impeached from office. Bolton’s unpublished manuscript reveals a firsthand account of the White House withholding almost $400 million in security aid to Ukraine. The leak revealed that this was linked to his request that they announce investigations into his political rivals, most especially his Democratic rival, former vice president Joe Biden as well as his son Hunter. Bolton wrote that Trump explicitly told him that he would prefer to keep the aid frozen until the investigations were done.
Given that Trump’s defense team is now laying out their arguments, Bolton’s revelation may threaten to weaken their rebuttals.