The New York Times has just reported new information regarding the President’s attempt to extort Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for both US military and other aid, as well as a White House visit.
EXCLUSIVE: Bolton book contains new, earlier, allegation of Trump's involvement in pressure campaign. Trump asked Bolton to call Zelensky to ensure he would meet w/Giuliani. Cipollone and Mulvaney were in room. w/@maggieNYT https://t.co/8lZaG4zbfu
— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) January 31, 2020
From The New York Times (emphasis mine):
WASHINGTON — More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.
The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United States government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.
The account in Mr. Bolton’s manuscript portrays the most senior White House advisers as early witnesses in the effort that they have sought to distance the president from. And disclosure of the meeting underscores the kind of information Democrats were looking for in seeking testimony from his top advisers in their impeachment investigation, including Mr. Bolton and Mr. Mulvaney, only to be blocked by the White House.
While all of the reporting and the reporters on this are focusing on what does this mean for today’s/this evening’s votes. Specifically whether this will force the votes on motions to bring witnesses and then to dismiss the impeachment charges against the President back until sometime over the weekend or next week. While that reporting is interesting, it misses the larger point: John Bolton’s information has a shelf life. And we are fast approaching that information passing it’s use by date.
Bolton’s information and use as a fact witness who directly observed what the President and other members of his senior staff – Chief of Staff Mulvaney, VP Pence, WH Counsel Cippolone, and others – has a limited shelf life. That information only has value if he can get it out before the Senate dismisses the impeachment charges against the President. Once the Senate dismisses the impeachment charges, his book is going to fail its pre-publication classification review, because it will be made to fail it’s pre-publication classification review in order to keep it from ever seeing the light of day. The person overseeing that review, National Security Council Counsel John Eisenberg is one of White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s deputies. Bolton will likely sue to force his book to be approved, which is the normal response to these things, and that suit will be resolved several years from now. While that suit drags on, as soon as the Senate dismisses the impeachment charges against the President, the President will have AG Barr go after him the way that Deputy FBI Director McCabe and others have been targeted. Bolton’s only chance now is to get ahead of what’s coming. And that chance has a very quickly oncoming expiration date.
Today just went sideways for Senator McConnell, the President, and Pat Cipollone whose long suspected complicity and involvement in all of this has now been further exposed to the light of day. The question is whether Senator McConnell can regain his footing to do what we all know he is planning on doing.
Open thread!
Kent
So you don’t think the House Intelligence Committee can get Bolton on the stand later this year to spill all under oath. I’d try to time it for around August 24th, the first day of the GOP Convention. That seems like a good day to hold Bolton hearings.
And, of course, if Trump loses, then any holds on Bolton’s book are going to vanish in January 2021. But by then the public may have lost interest.
Hoodie
Rule 3.7: Lawyer as Witness
Advocate
(a) A lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless:
(1) the testimony relates to an uncontested issue;
(2) the testimony relates to the nature and value of legal services rendered in the case; or
(3) disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.
(b) A lawyer may act as advocate in a trial in which another lawyer in the lawyer’s firm is likely to be called as a witness unless precluded from doing so by Rule 1.7 or Rule 1.9.
Mr. Cippolone should be subject to disciplinary action.
Ryan
Fuck John Bolton. Why didn’t he just testify before the house? He would only do it if subpoenaed? Really? Why a subpoena? Why not just go?
He stonewalled, plain and simple. He could have volunteered his testimony. (John Bolton: “Yea, I will testify before the House, but I have to be subpoenaed, and I know that there is a complicated legal debate going on between executive privilege and congressional subpoena power, and this matter is currently in Federal Court, which could delay this forever, so, in reality, there is no real likelihood I would ever have to testify, but I still look like I am willing to cooperate.”)
Now that there is no possibility of testifying, the book will now reveal all. What a self-serving asshole.
MattF
So, Cipollone is the missing eyewitness that Republicans have been so ardently searching for. Good to know.
Cheryl Rofer
Bolton is famous as a bureaucratic infighter, so I would have expected him to play this smarter. And he should have good connections to know how the Republican side of the impeachment trial would go.
There are some conflicting factors at work, though. He would probably like to stay in the ruling party’s good graces, but he is irritated at Trump and probably genuinely sees him as a danger to the republic. His respose to that seems to have been to play it cautious, which seems uncharacteristic of him.
We can probably put it down to ETTD.
MomSense
Didn’t Adam Schiff mention something about NSA collection that was being blocked by the White House but referenced by one of the House witnesses in the classified part of her/his testimony. I think Schiff told Senators it was worth viewing. Anyone know anything more about this?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kent:
That’s true, but from the POV of Bolton’s book sales, it’s irrelevant.
Duane
C’mon, John Bolton! Walk into the Senate and demand to be heard. Shout it out for the world to hear! Make them throw you out so everyone can see the cover-up. (Can’t believe I’m rooting for Bolton to be our nation’s hero.)
Nicole
So, if the book gets blocked from being published, does he get to keep his $2 million advance since it’s the government’s decision not his? Wow. That is some grift. Get paid $2 million for some things that never actually sees the light of day. Bolton is SUCH a Republican.
Hungry Joe
As I keep saying: If Bolton could get his glasses adjusted properly, everything would fall into place. Two out of three photos show him trying to get the world into focus, and this, I think, is his problem — and ultimately our problem.
That’s the best explanation I can come up with. For Bolton, anyway. For McConnell I got nothin’. For Trump I got nothin’. They’re ciphers, mysteries, unknowables.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nicole:
It depends on his contract. Usually you keep the advance. But because there may be some clause in his about it passing national security clearance, since the publisher knew they’d have to submit the book to that process
Kay
What’s kind of fun to think about is this was the Trump campaign strategy. The plan was to use Ukraine to invent charges against their political opponents. They got caught, which leaves them without a plan, and that’s to our advantage.
Kent
Advances are exactly that. Advances on future earnings. If the book doesn’t earn any money then he would likely owe some or all back, depending on how the contract is structured.
joel hanes
If Cipollone was at that meeting, he has been representing in a case in which he is complicit.
Disbarment should follow.
Major Major Major Major
Couldn’t a congressperson just get their hands on the book and read it into the record? Wouldn’t even take a whole day.
MattF
@Kay: It’s Putin’s strategy that matters here. He’s a bit boxed in now, in Ukraine, so maybe a distraction comes next.
bemused
The Republican party is a septic tank that is overflowing and they can’t stop the sewage leaks.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: I doubt Bolton will respond to a subpoena from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He wants to control this. What he doesn’t recognize is he has very little, if any, control at all. And what control he has expires very soon.
Adam L Silverman
@Ryan: The book is going to be buried under pre-publication classification review for several years at least. That ship has left port, ran into a reef in a hurricane, and has sunk. The only question left is whether it can be salvaged.
PJ
@Major Major Major Major: someone has to give it to them. The publisher or Bolton won’t do it, because then people can just read the book for free in the Congressional Record, and Haberman and the Times won’t do it because then they wouldn’t get any more scoops out of it.
Kay
@joel hanes:
Agreed. If they don’t kick him for this, there are no rules. It’s actually worse- he stated repeatedly that there were no fact witnesses when he knew he was one. The first two infractions were failing to absent himself – not leaving the room and then not withdrawing after he was in the room. The last was affirmative. He appeared and deliberately misled.
Major Major Major Major
I’ve never heard of a publishing contract that would force you to pay back your advance if nobody buys the book. But there are definitely ones that make you pay it back if they decide not to publish it.
@PJ: Doubtless a number of people in those offices have access to the MS. They could leak it easily no matter how many strongly-worded memoranda Baquet and Haberman send out on the topic. And of the multitude of liberals who have access at the publisher, surely somebody must care. Surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
ETA: Maybe whoever leaked it to the Times in the first place could do it.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Two separate items. The White House classified one of VP Pence’s nat-sec advisor’s memos about this mess. She is a career foreign service officer who is headed to CENTCOM as a deputy foreign policy advisor on Monday. That is one thing he told them they needed to see. He has seen it in the House SCIF. The second item is that the NSA has now informed him that they will not submit requested materials for oversight pertaining to Ukraine. And that Schiff’s understanding is that this is the result of orders from someone in the White House and is also illegal/obstruction of Congress’s oversight function.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: If the nominee is Biden (which looks increasingly likely, to my profound fucking dismay), they won’t have to shift gears too much. Basically, the Trump people were going to run the Hillary Clinton playbook against Biden, accusing the opponent of crimes of which Trump is guilty, and they still will.
The only wrinkle is that they meant to abuse Trump’s power by roping Ukraine into backing the scheme, and it looks like they’ll have to proceed without that bogus proof point. But maybe they can get Xi of China to scare something up. If you were Xi, wouldn’t you want Trump reelected so you could continue to pants the oaf as you advanced your plan to undermine U.S. hegemony and expand your sphere of influence? I sure would!
Even failing that, Trump has Bill Barr as an ace in the hole. They’ll find something scammy about some Biden somewhere to investigate. As the Hillary Clinton playbook showed, it doesn’t have to be anything about the opponent specifically; an adjacent person will do just as well.
I’m not saying it will work; the press doesn’t seem to hate Biden quite as much as it hates Hillary Clinton, and Trump has a shitty record this time, and we know he is capable of winning the EC because he’s done so once already. Maybe that’ll be enough.
Adam L Silverman
@Nicole: Will depend on what the contract for the book stipulates.
Adam L Silverman
MSNBC has just announced that Senator Murkowski is a no vote on witnesses.
Kay
They’re also not very confident Trump can beat Biden on the merits or the bigwigs wouldn’t have spent six months on this drug deal.
That’s heartening.
JGabriel
Adam L. Silverman @ Top:
Or, if we get a Democratic president in 2021, maybe before the end of 2021? I mean, would a Democratic administration which inherited that suit really keep protecting the Trump Crime Syndicate?
Or would they say, “We’ve re-reviewed the Bolton manuscript and we are convinced it was improperly classified. We’re dropping the case.”?
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: It does not. The Saudis and the Emiratis, the Israelis, the Chinese, and the Russians will all run their own versions. Turkey and the Philippines and the DPRK might do so as well.
jonas
Exactly. Talk about stepping on your own dick. I cannot fathom how he gamed this one out. Did he not think the House would vote on impeachment and this would all go away or something?
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: A Democratic administration could change the outcome of the review.
Kay
What a joke of a country we are on “transparency”. Every powerful person in the country will have read this manuscript by the time the public is given the information.
We don’t have information we need and we can’t get it in a timely manner. Certain select other people get it! Just not the public. It’s forbidden and beyond the capacity of our existing laws to provide.
Hungry Joe
@Kent: Unless there’s something in the contract about returning the advance if the book proves to be unpublishable (for whatever reason), Bolton will get to keep the money. An advance works like this: Let’s say a publisher gives you a $10,000 advance, and the contract stipulates that you get $1 per book sold. You get nothing on the sale of the first 10,000 books: That was covered by your advance. You get $1 for the 10,001st book, and $1 for every book after that.
If the book sells two copies, the $10,000 advance is still yours.
It gets more complicated that that — your royalties could jump to $1.25 for each book over 50,000, say — but that’s the basic structure.
Adam L Silverman
glory b
@Betty Cracker: I gotta repeat this again, I don’t think he can win PA, and I think his 2016 win here smells. Every other Repub except Trump and Toomey lost. There were, if I recall correctly, 6 other statewide races, including judicial ones.
One would have to believe that people voted for Trump and Toomey, then voted for Dems the rest of the way down, because the Dems won by comfortable margins. We have a solid majority of Dem judges, Attorney General, Auditor General, Gov., LT Gov, and several local seats.
I still smell a rat.
Sloane Ranger
@Adam L Silverman: With any luck all these different people will get in each other’s way and cancel each other out, forcing voters to actually listen to the candidates and actually read some primary sources of information.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: Dare I say it? Republican criminals in disarray!
Hoodie
@Kay: Cipollone’s actions are incredibly stupid and/or arrogant. I hope someone files a bar complaint. Like everything with Trump, the smarter, less craven people bug out or get fired, and he’s left with increasingly inept and/or desperate accomplices.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: IF she believes there has not been a fair trial, then why the hell won’t she vote for the witnesses and documents that would make it a fair trial.
No need to response, I just had to say that in the hopes that it might be a release valve for my desire to scream.
WaterGirl
Without a fair trial, one can neither convict or acquit.
Why don’t those who think this can’t be a fair trial abstain from voting, or not show up for the vote?
(I know. Because this is just an excuse, not a rational reason.)
tam1MI
I am reading in other places that there was a time limit on how long the White House had to review Bolton’s book (it was a condition of him providing it for review), and that when the limit expired is when the NYT started dropping excerpts.
I’m taking it with a huge grain of salt, but it does sound more plausible to me than, “Bolton, renowned for his cunning in bureaucratic infighting, suddenly turned stupid”.
WaterGirl
@tam1MI: Preet said on his podcast that they have 30 days to review any book that is submitted.
Preet got his letter back for the book he published at 27 or 28 days in.
So the 30-day limit is definitely a thing. I had not heard that they were over the limit, but I sure hope that’s true, because then HE does get to publish, I believe.