- Home
- Live Blog
- Breaking News
- Top Headlines
- Cities
- NE News
- Sentinel Media
- Sports
- Education
- Jobs
New York: At least three Republican senators have said they were open to witnesses like former National Security Adviser John Bolton being called to testify at the Senate trial overshadowing the defense of President Donald Trump after his reported claims about Trump freezing military aid to Ukraine.
The Democrat’s demand for witnesses hung in the balance on Monday needing just one more Republican to defect and the influential Senator Mitt Romney said it was increasingly likely that others from his party would join him in asking for Bolton’s testimony.
The New York Times reported on Sunday evening that Bolton, who had been dismissed by Trump, had written in a draft of his memoir that the president had tied the unfreezing of the $341 million military aid to Ukraine to the country’s leadership ordering a probe of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The aid issue is central to the Democrats’ claim that Trump abused his power and endangered national security by stopping the aid while US ally Ukraine was at war with Russia.
Bolton’s claim undercuts Trump’s lawyers’ assertions during the trial on Saturday that the freeze was not connected to the request for the probe but was to ensure that the new leadership in Ukraine was rooting out corruption.
Trump also denied it in the tweet and added, “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”
The aid was ultimately released without a probe and none of the witnesses produced by the Democrats during the House impeachment process only speculated or surmised that the probe and the aid were linked, they said. But Bolton’s testimony would be from a party directly dealing with the president.
As the trial resumed on Monday, Kenneth Starr whose investigation of Bill Clinton was the basis for his impeachment in 1998, appeared this time as a defense lawyer. (IANS)