The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

Esper, Pompeo, and I continued exchanging thoughts about how to persuade Trump to release the security assistance before September 30. We could have confronted Trump directly, trying to refute the Giuliani theories and arguing that it was impermissible to leverage US government authorities for personal political gain. We could have, and we almost certainly would have failed, and perhaps have also created one or more vacancies among Trump’s senior advisors. The correct course was to separate the Ukraine security assistance from the Ukraine fantasies, get the military aid approved, and deal with Giuliani and the fantasies later. I thought, in fact, I had already initiated the second, Giuliani-related track, with the White House Counsel’s office and subsequently with Bill Barr. There was also no point in encouraging more fruitless grinding at lower levels of the bureaucracy. None of that would have any impact on Trump’s decision-making and could only risk press stories that would dig Trump in even more deeply against releasing the aid. That, at least, was my assessment at the time, and one that I believe Esper and Pompeo agreed with.