U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin called on Republican lawmakers to allow former White House aide John Bolton to testify as the Senate considers articles of impeachment against President Trump.
The New York Times reports that Bolton, in unpublished excerpts from his book about his time in the Trump administration, alleged the president said in August he wanted to continue to freeze security funding to Ukraine until officials in that country announced an investigation into political rival Joe Biden and his family.
The charge appears to undercut a key element of the Trump legal team’s argument: that the freeze in funding was not explicitly linked to the request made of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a July phone call to investigate the work Biden’s son was doing with a Ukranian energy company.
Appearing at a U.S. Capitol news conference alongside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Baldwin urged GOP senators to allow Bolton to be called as a witness.
The Madison Dem added that if Bolton testified under oath to the allegations, it would “directly contradict” what Trump told fellow Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh.
Johnson said in a contentious October interview on “Meet the Press” that when he asked the president about the prospect of quid pro quo with U.S. aid to Ukraine, Trump ‘vehemently, adamantly” denied any link.
“He said, ‘I’d never do that,'” Johnson said.
But Baldwin said today “the people of Wisconsin certainly want to know if the president did not tell Sen. Johnson the truth.”
“The American people simply want all the facts. They want the truth in order to provide them that the Senate must support testimony from relevant witnesses with firsthand knowledge about president Trump’s conduct,” she said.
Baldwin also urged her GOP colleagues to reflect on the responsibilities they accepted when they became senators.
“Every senator took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and every senator needs to ask themselves whether they’re going to live up to that oath in this Senate impeachment trial,” she said.
See the NYT story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/us/politics/trump-bolton-book-ukraine.html
