The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Even earlier, on December 10, prompted by Trump’s Christmas party remarks on Huawei and the Uighurs, I spoke to Pompeo on these problems, and also on questions about the settlements of some of Trump’s personal legal issues. The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept. Moreover, leniency for Chinese firms violating US sanctions, cheating our companies, or endangering our telecom infrastructure could only be described as appeasing our adversaries, totally contrary to our interests. Somewhere nearby was resignation territory, I said, which Pompeo agreed with. This didn’t yet require drafting a resignation letter, but warning lights were flashing.

  Trump called Putin on May 3, because, as he said with no apparent basis, Putin was “dying” to talk to him. In fact, Trump was “dying” to talk, having not had a real conversation with Putin since the Kerch Strait incident forced cancellation of their bilateral at the Buenos Aires G20. Although Trump had announced then that substantive meetings were off until the Ukrainian ships and crews were released, this call to Putin unceremoniously lifted that moratorium, which had lasted since late November, with Russia still holding them. They discussed Ukraine briefly but to no great effect. Putin wondered whether Igor Kolomoisky would get his Ukrainian assets back, given his financial support for Zelensky’s successful campaign. Zelensky, said Putin, was quite well-known in Russia because of his television career, and he had lots of contacts there. However, Putin added that he had yet to manifest himself. He said he had not yet spoken with Zelensky because he was not yet the president, and because there was no final result yet. Whether Putin meant the fate of the existing Rada or whether Zelensky would call snap parliamentary elections was unclear.7

  On May 8, the Ukraine pace began to quicken. At about one forty-five p.m., Trump called me to the Oval, where he was meeting with Giuliani, Mulvaney, Cipollone, and perhaps others. The subject was Ukraine, and Giuliani’s desire to meet with President-Elect Zelensky to discuss his country’s investigation of either Hillary Clinton’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign or something having to do with Hunter Biden and the 2020 election, or maybe both. In the various commentaries I heard on these subjects, they always seemed intermingled and confused, one reason I did not pay them much heed. Even after they became public, I could barely separate the strands of the multiple conspiracy theories at work. Trump was clear I was to call Zelensky and make sure Giuliani got his meeting in Kiev next week. Giuliani swore he had no clients involved, which I found hard to believe, but I still hoped to avoid getting into this mess. Yovanovitch’s firing was already in the press, and a Giuliani visit to Ukraine would certainly find its way there as well. Giuliani also said he was after an official at State, last name of Kent, who Giuliani said was in league with George Soros and very hostile to Trump. I had heard the name before in connection with Yovanovitch but didn’t know him from Adam.

  I was happy to escape at about 1:55 and return to my office, where I promptly did not call Zelensky, hoping the whole thing might disappear. I had barely settled down at my desk before John Sullivan and Marc Short came charging in, saying Trump had dispatched them from the weekly trade meeting in the Roosevelt Room to talk about Kent. (I found these weekly trade meetings so chaotic I largely left them for Kupperman to attend, which punishment he didn’t deserve, but life is hard.) Sullivan also barely knew who Kent was, but he described the scene in the Roosevelt Room, Trump talking to him in a loud whisper while Bob Lighthizer went through a series of charts on various trade issues, with Trump obviously not paying attention. After he finished speaking to Sullivan about Kent, Trump turned back to Lighthizer for a few seconds before saying in a loud voice to Sullivan, “Go talk to Bolton about Kent.” He then said to Short, “Show him where John’s office is.” So, there they were. Short departed, and I explained to Sullivan the latest Ukraine conversation I had just had in the Oval, and asked him to talk to Pompeo as soon as he could. Pompeo was arriving back in Washington by nine the next morning, and Sullivan said he would brief him then.

  The issue of Giuliani’s trip to Ukraine percolated for a few days without a clear decision. Cipollone and Eisenberg came to see me on May 10, with Yovanovitch’s firing having received more media coverage (although the mainstream press showed little interest), and with Giuliani on his own generating a fair amount of attention. In a New York Times interview published in print that morning,8 he was quoted as saying, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do… There’s nothing illegal about it… Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy—I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.” The three of us agreed Giuliani couldn’t be allowed to go to Ukraine, but the brouhaha also made it uncertain who from the Trump Administration could attend Zelensky’s inauguration, given the adverse publicity it might receive.

  Pence’s participation therefore looked doubtful, complicated because the inauguration’s exact date was still not set. Embassy Kiev was quite surprised on May 16 to hear that Ukraine’s Rada had picked May 20, which didn’t leave us much time to check schedules and choose the US delegation. By then, Trump had concluded Pence could not go, and Pompeo decided not to for his own reasons. By the end of the day on May 16, it looked like Energy Secretary Rick Perry would be the lead, which was justifiable because of the significant energy issues Ukraine posed, and the importance of Kiev-Washington cooperation in the face of Moscow’s exploitation of energy resources throughout Central and Eastern Europe. US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland worked hard to be added to the US delegation, but because he had no legitimate reason to attend, I repeatedly deleted his name. Yet, in the end, he was on the delegation, because, we learned, Mulvaney had insisted. Why the Rada chose such an early inauguration was unclear, but our observers on the ground believed Poroshenko’s party decided it was prepared to risk snap parliamentary elections, believing Zelensky could not possibly meet the expectations growing around him. That turned out to be a miscalculation by Poroshenko’s advisors and a huge boost to Zelensky.

  In fact, Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration brought the further surprise that he was calling Poroshenko’s bluff and scheduling early parliamentary elections. No exact date was set, but the voting was expected to be at some point in July. It also became increasingly plain, not only to me but to others as well, including Fiona Hill, the NSC Senior Director for Europe and Russia, that Trump completely accepted Giuliani’s line that the “Russia collusion” narrative, invented by domestic US political adversaries, had been run through Ukraine. In other words, Trump was buying the idea that Ukraine was actually responsible for carrying out Moscow’s efforts to hack US elections. That clearly meant we wouldn’t be doing anything nice for Ukraine any time soon, no matter how much it might help us forestall further Russian advances there.

  On May 22, after addressing the Coast Guard Academy’s graduation ceremony in New London, Connecticut, I left Andrews for Japan, for final preparations for Trump’s state visit, the first under the new Emperor Naruhito. Two days later, from Tokyo, I spoke with Kupperman, who had attended Trump’s debriefing earlier that day (it was still May 23 in Washington when we spoke) from our delegation to Zelensky’s inaugural: Perry, Sondland, Volker, and Senator Ron Johnson. It was a classic. “I don’t want to have any fucking thing to do with Ukraine,” said Trump, per Kupperman. “They fucking attacked me. I can’t understand why. Ask Joe diGenova, he knows all about it. They tried to fuck me. They’re corrupt. I’m not fucking with them.” All this, he said, pertained to the Clinton campaign’s efforts, aided by Hunter Biden, to harm Trump in 2016 and 2020.

  Volker tried to intervene to say something pertinent about Ukraine, and Trump replied, “I don’t give a shit.”

  Perry said
we couldn’t allow a failed state, presumably a Ukraine where effective government had broken down, and Trump said, “Talk to Rudy and Joe.”

  “Give me ninety days,” Perry tried again, but Trump interrupted, saying, “Ukraine tried to take me down. I’m not fucking interested in helping them,” although he relented to say Zelensky could visit him in the White House, but only if he was told how Trump felt in the matter. “I want the fucking DNC server,” said Trump, returning to the fray, adding, “Okay, you can have ninety days. But I have no fucking interest in meeting with him.” Afterward, Perry and Kupperman agreed Zelensky should not be invited until after the July Rada elections, to see if he had any chance of governing effectively. (Several nearby leaders, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, thought Zelensky’s prospects were grim, which was not inconsistent with Putin’s standoffish views.) There were also rumors Perry was leaving the Administration in the near future, so the “ninety day” figure squared with the notion he wanted the time to achieve something in Ukraine. Senator Johnson told me several weeks later, regarding this Trump meeting, “I was pretty shocked by the President’s response.” I thought it sounded like just another day at the office.

  Nonetheless, in the following weeks, Sondland, who apparently didn’t have enough to do dealing with the European Union at its Brussels headquarters, kept pushing for an early Zelensky visit to Washington. Pompeo didn’t care much one way or the other. It was clear he had no appetite for reining Sondland in, despite his normal insistence that Ambassadors reported to him (which they did, usually through Assistant Secretaries), and that he didn’t want them going around him to the President. This was par for the course in Pompeo’s management of the State Department: conflict avoidance. Trump resolved the visit issue just before leaving for the United Kingdom in June by saying not until the fall, the right outcome in my view. Key Europeans also showed caution on Zelensky’s prospects. Both German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Zelensky in Kiev in late May but formed no definite conclusions. When Trump met with French President Macron on June 6, Macron seemed to be warming to Zelensky, as was Merkel when Trump met with her at the Osaka G20. However, based on Trump’s recent call with Putin, there was no sign Putin was prepared for serious discussions about Crimea or the Donbas, certainly not before the Rada elections.

  The next discussion with Trump on Ukraine that I recall was not until June 25. I was in Israel to meet Netanyahu and for a trilateral meeting with Patrushev and Ben-Shabbat, but I attended an NSC meeting via videoconferencing from our former Jerusalem consulate, near the David Citadel Hotel, where I was staying. The meeting, held in Washington in the Sit Room with the usual crew attending, was to discuss other matters, but at one point, Trump riffed on Nord Stream II, complaining about “our great European allies” and Germany’s low spending on defense: “Angela [Merkel] saying she’d be there [two percent of GDP] by 2030, remember that, John,” he said to the screen in the Sit Room, where I was visible from Israel.9 “I listen to my advisors despite what people think,” Trump laughed (so did I), and then he was off again in full roar: “Everyone screws us on trade. This is going to be the best June in years. The tariffs have a lot of money pouring in.” Then it was off to Ukraine and a $250 million assistance program for weapons purchases. “Did you approve it, John?” I said it was a congressional earmark that the Defense Department was proceeding with. “How stupid is this?” Trump asked. “Germany doesn’t spend on neighboring countries. Angela says, ‘We don’t spend because it’s a neighboring country.’10 John, do you agree on Ukraine?” I didn’t answer directly, worrying about what had suddenly made Trump pay attention to this particular military assistance. Instead, I suggested that Esper raise all these questions about NATO and Ukraine burden-sharing at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting scheduled in the coming days. This was likely the first time I heard security assistance to Ukraine called into question, but the real issue was how Trump found out about it, and who came up with the idea to use it as leverage against Zelensky and his new government. I never learned the answers to these questions, but Mulvaney, in his continuing capacity as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, was certainly one possible source. The key point that I carried away from this conversation was that the Ukraine security assistance was at risk of being swallowed by the Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories.

  On July 10, I met in my office with my Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksandr Danylyuk, the new Secretary of their National Security and Defense Council. Danylyuk was a pro-Western reformer. Formerly Poroshenko’s Finance Minister, he had resigned because he didn’t believe Poroshenko’s government was committed to real reform.11 Perry, Sondland, and Volker all asked to attend (did Sondland spend any time in Brussels?), and it was clear immediately that the three of them were trying to squeeze me into inviting Zelensky to the White House before the July parliamentary elections. Since I knew, and they should have realized after their May 23 Oval Office meeting with Trump, that he didn’t want to have anything to do with Ukrainians of any stripe (influenced, wrongly, by the nonsense Giuliani had been feeding him), I didn’t play along. Danylyuk obviously wanted a closer relationship with us, which I strongly supported and which was much easier to talk about. Danylyuk was surprised and uncomfortable that I didn’t readily agree to a Zelensky visit, which came from the incessant boosterism of the others in the meeting, but I wasn’t about to explain to foreigners that the three of them were driving outside their lanes. The more I resisted, the more Sondland pushed, getting into Giuliani territory I saw as out of bounds.

  In the later congressional hearings, Fiona Hill accurately testified that after the meeting and a picture with Danylyuk and the hordes of US officials at the meeting, I told her to get into a meeting Sondland held on his own in the Ward Room with the Ukrainians and others from the meeting in my office. I was stunned at the simplemindedness of pressing for a face-to-face Trump-Zelensky meeting where the “Giuliani issues” could be resolved, an approach it appeared Mulvaney shared from his frequent meetings with Sondland. I told her to take this whole matter to the White House Counsel’s office; she quoted me accurately as saying, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” I thought the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior. Was it a factor in my later resignation? Yes, but as one of many “straws” that contributed to my departure. Earlier, Hill testified, I had called Giuliani “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” which still sounds right today. Perry and Sondland in particular kept pushing, including on Danylyuk to press me at least for a Trump-Zelensky phone call before the Rada elections. I continued to fend them off, fearing the call could backfire.

  I was off to Japan and South Korea on Saturday morning, July 20, the day before the parliamentary elections, to discuss the base-cost issues. I called Kupperman from the air, now that it was clear any Trump call would be after the Rada elections, asking him to call Danylyuk and politely tell him to stop listening to Sondland. Kupperman told me shortly thereafter that Danylyuk was very grateful to receive this news, as was Bill Taylor, our Chargé in Kiev, who knew just as we did Sondland was freelancing. Most interesting, Danylyuk said the Trump-Zelensky meeting (or call) was not his idea but Sondland’s. The whole thing was a complete goat rope. Zelensky’s supporters did very well in the elections, receiving about 43 percent of the vote, enough to give his party and like-minded independent candidates a working majority in the Rada. I hoped this was an important step toward moving things back into proper channels.

  I returned from Asia the evening before Trump’s now-famous July 25 call to Zelensky. I briefed him quickly ahead of the call at nine a.m., which I expected to be a repeat of the essentially pro forma congratulatory call Trump made on the evening of Zelensky’s own victory in the presidential runoff. I explained that Ukraine had just seized a Russian tanker and crew in retaliation for the Russian seizures that touched off the Kerch
Strait incident in 2018, which showed real spine on the part of Zelensky and his new team. Sondland, whom I had kept off my briefing call (which would have been the first time in my tenure that any Ambassador would have participated in such a briefing), had, through Mulvaney, spoken with Trump at seven thirty a.m. on God knows what agenda.

  The “call record” of the Trump-Zelensky discussion, which I listened to, as is customary, compiled by NSC notetakers, now released publicly, is not a “transcript” like that produced by a court reporter of testimony in trial or in depositions. Soon after arriving at the White House, on May 18, 2018, I met with Eisenberg to discuss the process for creating these call records and how it had evolved. We decided to leave things as they were, to avoid recording as final, under the Presidential Records Act, things that shouldn’t be kept for posterity. Until the Ukraine controversy broke, I was not aware we ever deviated from that policy, including “storage” procedures. Nor, at the time, did I think Trump’s comments in the call reflected any major change in direction; the linkage of the military assistance with the Giuliani fantasies was already baked in. The call was not the keystone for me, but simply another brick in the wall. These are my recollections of what was important in the conversation, not from the call record.