It looks like New York’s getting the crime uptick politicians have been asking for




Robbery is up almost 30% in New York City since the first of the year. Is this a statistical blip, a trend — or a New Year’s bail-reform gift from Albany, robbery now largely being a revolving-door offense in the Empire State?

Time will tell, but consider this as well: According to the latest NYPD stats, the number of shooting victims in the city is up 31% since New Year’s Day — so at the very least Gotham appears to be off to a rocky 2020 compared to last year.

Which should not surprise: Not only does government usually get more of what it encourages, when it comes to crime, it also gets more of what it fails to discourage.

Sad to say, New York falls down on both counts.

Albany’s bail-reform initiative got off to an ominously comical start. When the feds had to take custody of alleged serial bank-robber Gerod Woodberry because local judges had to keep turning him loose — well, what else was there to do but laugh?

But consider this: Robbery in the third degree became a revolving-door offense Jan. 1, and this was followed by a dramatic, 29% spike in reported robberies, according to the most recent — albeit very short-term — CompStat numbers.

This crime isn’t nearly as amusing as a haplessly compulsive bank heister — robbery-third involves the threat of physical force and was devastatingly common in the ’80s — but its current threat to the city’s streets is clear enough.

Shootings, thank goodness, aren’t yet revolving-door offenses but nevertheless also were up sharply, according to CompStat — with a 22% hike in incidents and that 31% increase in victims. A Thursday shootout in Upper Manhattan — one dead, two wounded — suggests the spike is no fluke.

It’s also no surprise. As a matter of policy, City Hall has backed away from the quality-of-life enforcement that historically encouraged criminals to leave their weapons at home — stop-and-frisk, for example, has virtually ended and hardly anybody is busted for fare-beating any more.

So, more guns — more gunfire. Easy peasy.

Equally intuitive is why New York is evolving into a soft-on-crime world — even if nobody wants to talk about it.

It really is simple: Politicians pander, and you can learn a lot by watching to whom they pander. Right about now that would be people who — wittingly or otherwise — are intent on making New York less safe.

These are basically the folks who embrace a common, albeit perverse, interpretation of affirmative action — arguing that energetic law enforcement is illegitimate because it tends to have disproportionate racial, ethnic or class consequences.

This is not all that’s going on, of course, but it is the principal motivator of Albany’s revolving door “reforms”; it underlies the virtual abandonment of quality-of-life law enforcement in New York City; it’s the reason Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza refuses to address school violence — angering both parents and the United Federation of Teachers — and it has prompted the federal government to threaten a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary city” policies now so warmly embraced by City Hall and Albany.

Specifically, Gerod Woodberry’s alleged bank robberies; Thursday’s shootings at 135th Street and Riverside Drive; Carranza’s contemptuous walkout from a school-violence town hall meeting and the r*pe-murder of a 92-year-old Queens woman allegedly by an illegal immigrant set free by city officials in defiance of federal authorities are of a piece — and they did not happen in a vacuum.

They occurred in the context of a strengthening, extremely disturbing official acceptance of behavior that would not remotely have been tolerated before Bill de Blasio became mayor. And it’s not just de Blasio; the City Council, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature are actively promoting the decline.

What’s missing in all this, of course, is that far more often than not the victims of New York’s growing soft-on-crime sensibilities belong to the same racial, ethnic and class categories as their victimizers. On this irony does the disparate-impact argument fail.

Amazingly, only the feds are looking out for the innocent.

“It is unbelievable that I have to come here and plead with the city of New York to cooperate with us to help keep this city safe,” said acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence last week, following the Queens r*pe-murder.

Indeed it is.

Certainly nobody else — not de Blasio, not Cuomo and not city and state lawmakers — is arguing on behalf of the real victims.

It’s the new normal, and don’t expect it to change.

 https://nypost.com/2020/0 .. en-asking-for/

 Officer Shoots, k*lls Suspect Inside Cruiser in Temple Hills: Police
Officers believe the suspect may have been high on PCP, a police spokesperson says

A Prince George's County police officer shot and k*lled a suspect who was handcuffed and wearing a seat belt inside a police cruiser Monday night in Temple Hills, Maryland, a spokesperson for the police department says.

Police received a 911 call around 8 p.m. about a driver who struck multiple vehicles in the Silver Hill area and on St. Barnabas Road, Prince George's County Police Department spokesperson Christina Cotterman said.

Officers found the suspected driver on Winston Street and immediately smelled what they believed to be PCP coming from the car, Cotterman said.

They handcuffed the driver and put him inside the front passenger seat of the cruiser and put the seat belt on him, Cotterman said.

One officer got into the driver's seat of the cruiser while the officers waited on a drug recognition expert to come to the scene, according to Cotterman.

Two witnesses told police they heard a struggle coming from the cruiser and heard loud bangs, Cotterman said.

The suspect was struck multiple times by the officer's weapon, according to Cotterman.

Officers then tried to save the suspect's life, she said.

He died a short time later at the hospital.

Cotterman said the officer did not have a body camera.

The officer is on administrative leave as the department investigates.

@Dj Mannie Fresh

BREAKING: John Bolton Says He AND William Barr BOTH Believed Trump Traded Favors With Chinese & Turkish Dictators


Bolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman

Jan. 27, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET

The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.

According to John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, Attorney General William P. Barr was concerned about President Trump’s conversations with autocratic leaders in two countries.

Tom Brenner/Reuters

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript.

Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.

Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.

Mr. Bolton recounted his discussion with Mr. Barr in a draft of an unpublished book manuscript that he submitted nearly a month ago to the White House for review. People familiar with the manuscript described its contents on the condition of anonymity.

The book also contains an account of Mr. Trump telling Mr. Bolton in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security a*sistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations of political rivals, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The matter is at the heart of the articles of impeachment against the president.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Barr’s conversations with Mr. Bolton, as did a spokesman for the National Security Council. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bolton, his publisher and his literary agency said they had not shared the manuscript with The Times.

“There was absolutely no coordination with The New York Times or anyone else regarding the appearance of information about his book, ‘The Room Where It Happened,’ at online booksellers,” Mr. Bolton, Simon & Schuster and Javelin said in a joint statement. “Any a*sertion to the contrary is unfounded speculation.”

Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, responded that “The Times does not discuss its sources, but I should point out that no one has questioned the accuracy of our report.”

Mr. Bolton wrote in the manuscript that Mr. Barr singled out Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Xi about the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, which agreed in 2017 to plead guilty and pay heavy fines for violating American sanctions on doing business with North Korea, Iran and other countries. A year later, Mr. Trump lifted the sanctions over objections from his own advisers and Republican lawmakers.

Mr. Barr also cited remarks Mr. Trump made to Mr. Erdogan in 2018 about the investigation of Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank. The Justice Department was scrutinizing Halkbank on fraud and money-laundering charges for helping Iran evade sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department.



Mr. Erdogan had been making personal appeals to Mr. Trump to use his authority to halt any additional enforcement against the bank. In 2018, Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Turkey that Mr. Trump had promised to instruct cabinet members to follow through on the matter. The bank had hired a top Republican fund-raiser to lobby the administration on the issue.

For months, it looked as though the unusual lobbying effort might succeed; but in October, the Justice Department indicted the bank for aiding Iran. The charges were seen in part as an attempt by the administration to show that it was taking a tough line on Turkey amid an outcry over Mr. Trump’s endorsement of its incursions in Syria.

Mr. Bolton’s statements in the book align with other comments he has made since leaving the White House in September. In November, he said in a private speech that none of Mr. Trump’s advisers shared the president’s views on Turkey and that he believed Mr. Trump adopted a more permissive approach to the country because of his financial ties there, NBC News reported. Mr. Trump’s company has a property in Turkey.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised dictators throughout his presidency. Last year, he said, “Where’s my favorite dictator?” as he waited to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr. Trump’s soft spot for authoritarians dates at least to his presidential campaign, when he praised Saddam Hussein for being “good” at k*lling terrorists and suggested that the world would be better off were Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan dictator who was k*lled in a violent uprising in 2011, “in charge right now.” Mr. Trump then suggested the ouster of both men was ultimately worse for the Middle East because the Islamic State had filled the void.

Mr. Trump declared himself “a big fan” of Mr. Erdogan as they sat side by side in the Oval Office last fall after Mr. Trump cleared the way for Turkish forces to invade Syria, though he warned Mr. Erdogan behind the scenes against the offensive.

Of Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump has been similarly effusive. When the Chinese Communist Party eliminated term limits, allowing Mr. Xi to keep his tenure open-ended, Mr. Trump extolled the outcome.

Mr. Xi had personally asked Mr. Trump to intervene to save ZTE, which was on the brink of collapse because of tough American penalties for sanctions violations.



Lifting the sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications giant that also serves as a geopolitical pawn for its government, most likely helped Mr. Trump negotiate with Mr. Xi in the trade war between the two countries. But Republican lawmakers and others objected to helping a Chinese company that broke the law and has been accused of posing a national security threat.

Mr. Bolton’s reputation for muscular foreign policy was always an odd fit with Mr. Trump, who often threatens excessive force but rarely reacts with it. Mr. Bolton was pleased when Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, including the United States, that the Obama administration had entered into. Other Trump advisers had urged him against it.

But Mr. Trump’s lack of action after Iranian aggression against the United States rankled Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Bolton’s book has already netted significant sales. Shortly after the disclosure of its contents on Sunday night, Amazon listed the book for purchase. By Monday evening, it was No. 17 on Amazon’s best-seller list.

Eric Lipton contributed reporting.


 https://www.nytimes.com/2 .. book-barr.html

but yall hero aint a house kneeguh though!

Cases could be 70 times more prevalent than what's been confirmed.


Coronavirus might already have infected way more people than we know.

Thousands of cases of the illness have already been confirmed around the world. But the virus, which is in the same family as SARS, spreads to up to three people for every person infected, and researchers estimate that way more people are likely infected already than have been confirmed. Not everyone who's showing symptoms of what could be coronavirus have been tested, and researchers say people could spread the virus before they're even feeling sick.

“My best guess now is perhaps 100,000 cases right now,” Neil Ferguson, a public health expert at Imperial College in London who’s been estimating the disease’s spread for the World Health Organization, told the Guardian. He thinks the actual number could be anywhere between 30,000 and 200,000.

According to data compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, 2,886 cases of the infection have been confirmed worldwide as of Monday — a number that’s risen dramatically over the last few days. Fewer than 1,000 cases were confirmed as of Friday. All 81 deaths so far were in China.

The number of confirmed cases could double every six days, according to researchers at Hong Kong University who are working with the World Health Organization. They expect that more than 43,000 people will contract the virus in Wuhan alone, a city of 11 million people in central China where the virus started. Authorities there are rushing to build a new hospital in just six days to treat new cases of coronavirus.




The virus is novel — this particular strain hadn’t been detected until December of last year — so scientists are rushing to figure out how exactly it spreads. And because it’s new, it’s harder to test for.

Right now, labs at the Centers for Disease Control are the only places that can test for the virus in the U.S., though public health officials are working to figure out how to roll out tests to local facilities.

About 100 samples from 26 states have been sent to the CDC for testing, according to NBC News. Five have come back positive, 25 tested negative, and theyÂ’re still working on the rest. So far, there are confirmed cases in California, Washington, Arizona, and Chicago.

As more samples are sent to the CDC for testing, experts expect to turn up more cases of the virus.

“It is likely there will be more cases reported in the U.S. in the coming days and weeks, likely including person-to-person spread,” the CDC said in a statement on Sunday.

Researchers suspect coronavirus takes about two weeks to show symptoms, and the Chinese government announced Monday that, unlike other infections like it, coronavirus could spread before people start showing any symptoms. That means it’s possible that tens of thousands of people are walking around, taking flights, breathing in public — and unsuspectingly spreading the virus to people they come into contact with.

So containing the virus will be difficult.

The Chinese government extended its new year holiday in an effort to keep people home and contain the virus. Chinese New Year celebrations were also canceled around the world as far away as Denver and Paris, over fear of the virus. An unprecedented quarantine program has been put into place in Wuhan, where authorities have essentially cut off travel in and out of several huge cities in Hubei.

ItÂ’s the largest public health-related quarantine ever put in place.

But 5 million people left Wuhan before the quarantine was put into place, and researchers are questioning whether the program will prove effective.

“You can’t board up a germ. A novel infection will spread,” Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law told the New York Times. “It will get out; it always does.”




 https://www.vice.com/en_u .. th-coronavirus

this is trending live right now

I'm untouchable

6:05

he doing malt liquor numbaz

They big plan gonna fail coming and going

LIVE 1pm The PEACH MINT Conviction: The Trial Of Donald J Drumpf (DAY 6)


LIVE STREAM: Drumpf’s Senate Impeachment Trial - Day 6


By
John Wagner
Jan. 27, 2020 at 8:55 a.m. EST

President Trump’s legal team is set to resume its defense Monday in his Senate impeachment trial amid fallout from a new report that Trump told then-national security adviser John Bolton last August that he wanted to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless it aided investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The defense team, led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, offered a preview of its case in an abbreviated session on Saturday in which they argued Trump had valid reasons for withholding military aid from Ukraine and that House prosecutors overlooked facts more favorable to him.


The crux of House Democrats’ case is the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president. Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that the president was justified in seeking the investigation because of a history of corruption involving the company.

●Democrats call for Bolton to testify in Trump impeachment trial after new report on aid to Ukraine.


●Trump denies telling Bolton that Ukraine aid was tied to investigations as explosive book claiming otherwise leaks.
●House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) ‘has not paid the price’ for impeachment, Trump says in what appears to be veiled threat.
Full Video of Lev Parnas (Russian Mafia a*sociate Trump claims not to know) Having Dinner with Trump while he threatens Ambassador Yovanovitch

 https://www.washingtonpos .. e99_story.html

Two out of three patients under investigation for coronavirus in Virginia have tested negative.

On Sunday, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) reported that they were investigating three potential cases of the virus, two in central Virginia, and one in the Northern regions of Virginia. On Monday, the two cases in central Virginia tested negative.

The third case is still being investigated. Specific details about the patient will not be provided and public health is working closely with him or her and anyone else who was in close contact so they can prevent the spread of illness.
...
 https://www.nbc12.com/202 .. s-coronavirus/

Flying back with possible corona virus.
If they were infected, they could have transmitted their germs on the airplane to other passengers. I'm glad they don't bother locking passengers down, until they've spent over 14 hours in an enclosed tube with a bunch of other people.

A third U.S. coronavirus case was confirmed Saturday. The patient was in hospital in Orange County and had recently returned from Wuhan



As a third case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S. on Saturday, the mayor of Wuhan warned that the world should expect infections to keep climbing.

On Sunday, Zhou Xianwang, the Mayor of Wuhan, said that 5 million people had left the city before travel restrictions were imposed ahead of the Chinese New Year. He said he expected at least 1,000 of some 3,000 suspected cases to be diagnosed with the highly-contagious virus.

Ma Xiaowei, the director of ChinaÂ’s National Health Commission, said that the virus had an incubation period of 10 to 14 days, during which the virus can be contagious but the patients does not display symptoms. That would mark a major difference between the coronavirus and SARS.

“From observations, the virus is capable of transmission even during incubation period,” Ma told a news conference, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. “Some patients have normal temperatures and there are many milder cases. There are hidden carriers.”

The pneumonia-causing illness that infects the respiratory tract is now responsible for 80 deaths in China as of Sunday, up from 56 the day before, and more than 2,744 infections, up from 1,975 Saturday, health officials in China said.

In an effort to ensure that people displaying symptoms come forward, Xiaowei said that the patients would not have to foot the bill of any medical costs.The virus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, likely at a food market; the youngest person to die of the illness was a nine-month-old baby girl.

There have also been three confirmed cases in the U.S., health officials in the U.S. said. The latest case, confirmed Saturday, was in Orange County; the person had recently visited Wuhan, and was in good condition. The gender and age of the person were not disclosed.

The first confirmed case in the U.S. was in the Seattle area; a man in his 30s who had also returned from a recent trip to Wuhan, was in good condition in a hospital in Everett, Wash. The second U.S. patient is a female Chicago resident in her 60s, who returned from a visit to Wuhan on Jan. 13.

The trade a*sociation of Chinese travel agencies also said that it would suspend overseas tour groups and flight/hotel vacation packages for Chinese citizens, effective Monday. The outbreak spread rapidly over the last seven days.

The new virus has also infected people in Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, France, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Macao and Nepal. The U.S. State Department ordered the evacuation of all U.S. personnel at the Consulate in Wuhan.

The spread of the virus was likely helped by travel related to ChinaÂ’s Lunar New Year holiday, which began Friday. This week, officials in Wuhan, a city with 11 million residents, closed the areaÂ’s outgoing airport and railway stations, and suspended all public transport.

Chinese officials have since expanded that travel ban to 16 surrounding cities with a combined population of more than 50 million people, including Huanggang, a neighboring city to Wuhan with 7.5 million people, effectively putting those cities on lockdown.

Hong KongÂ’s city leader Carrie Lam declared a state of emergency and said all primary and secondary schools would close until Feb. 17, two more weeks in addition to next weekÂ’s Lunar New Year holiday, the a*sociated Press reported.

The cityÂ’s marathon scheduled for Feb. 9, which typically attracts 70,000 participants, was also cancelled. Most of the cornavirus fatalities were older patients, although a 36-year-old man in Hubei died earlier this week, it added. Several major theme parks have also been shuttered.

 https://www.marketwatch.c .. sed-2020-01-26

MSNBC Anchor Denies Saying Slur During Kobe Bryant Clip




anchor Alison Morris denied saying a slur when broadcasting the news of basketball legend Kobe Bryant’s shocking death on Sunday.

The former Los Angeles Laker died in a private helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was among those confirmed dead.


Morris was talking about Bryant’s death when she appeared to utter what some heard as “n****rs” in a now-viral clip.



Shortly after, a Change.org petition called for Morris to be fired.

She denied using the slur in a tweet Sunday evening.

“Earlier today, while reporting on the tragic news of Kobe Bryant’s passing, I unfortunately stuttered on air, combining the names of the Knicks and the Lakers to say “Nakers,’” Morris tweeted.

“Please know I did not & would NEVER use a racist term. I apologize for the confusion this caused,” she continued.

As news of Bryant’s death spread around the world, countless tributes from friends, fans, former coaches and former teammates poured in.

Shaquille O’Neal, who won three championships with Bryant, said that he felt “sick” over the loss of of his friend.

“There’s no words to express the pain I’m going through now with this tragic and sad moment of loosing my friend, my brother, my partner in winning championships, my dude and my homie,” O’Neal wrote in a tweet. “I love you brother and you will be missed. My condolences goes out to the Bryant family and the families of the other passengers on board. IM SICK RIGHT NOW !”

Basketball legend Michael Jordan said that he was in “shock” over the death of his “little brother,” while former teammate Pau Gasol said the he was “Beyond devastated” over his “big brother.

“I can’t, I just can’t believe it,” Gasol added.

 https://www.huffpost.com/ .. b6d6767fd6a2ff

 https://www.thegatewaypun .. s-death-video/

BREAKING: BALLGAME! John “Usain” Bolton Confirms Trump CRIMES In New Book


Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says

By Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt

Jan. 26, 2020

Drafts of the book outline the potential testimony of the former national security adviser if he were called as a witness in the president’s impeachment trial.

WASHINGTON — President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security a*sistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.

The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.

Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close a*sociates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.

Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account of the Ukraine affair.

The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even k*ll the book’s publication or omit key passages.

Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.

Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.


And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told a*sociates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.

Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine, testified that she was “devastated” that the president vilified her.

During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton.

Charles J. Cooper, a lawyer for Mr. Bolton, declined to comment. The White House did not provide responses to questions about Mr. Bolton’s a*sertions, and representatives for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Bolton’s submission of the book to the White House may have given the White House lawyers direct insight into what Mr. Bolton would say if he were called to testify at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial. It also intensified concerns among some of his advisers that they needed to block Mr. Bolton from testifying, according to two people familiar with their concerns.

The White House has ordered Mr. Bolton and other key officials with firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Bolton said in a statement this month that he would testify if subpoenaed.

In recent days, some White House officials have described Mr. Bolton as a disgruntled former employee, and have said he took notes that he should have left behind when he departed the administration.

Mr. Trump told reporters last week that he did not want Mr. Bolton to testify and said that even if he simply spoke out publicly, he could damage national security.

“The problem with John is it’s a national security problem,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive?”

“It’s going to make the job very hard,” he added.

The Senate impeachment trial could end as early as Friday without witness testimony. Democrats in both the House and Senate have pressed for weeks to include any new witnesses and documents that did not surface during the House impeachment hearings to be fair, focusing on persuading the handful of Republican senators they would need to join them to succeed.

But a week into the trial, most lawmakers say the chances of 51 senators agreeing to call witnesses are dwindling, not growing.

Mr. Bolton would like to testify for several reasons, according to a*sociates. He believes he has relevant information, and he has also expressed concern that if his account of the Ukraine affair emerges only after the trial, he will be accused of holding back to increase his book sales.

Mr. Bolton, 71, a fixture in conservative national security circles since his days in the Reagan administration, joined the White House in 2018 after several people recommended him to the president, including the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.

But Mr. Bolton and Mr. Trump soured on each other over several global crises, including Iranian aggression, Mr. Trump’s posture toward Russia and, ultimately, the Ukraine matter. Mr. Bolton was also often at odds with Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney throughout his time in the administration.

Key to Mr. Bolton’s account about Ukraine is an exchange during a meeting in August with the president after Mr. Trump returned from vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Mr. Bolton raised the $391 million in congressionally appropriated a*sistance to Ukraine for its war in the country’s east against Russian-backed separatists. Officials had frozen the aid, and a deadline was looming to begin sending it to Kyiv, Mr. Bolton noted.


He, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had collectively pressed the president about releasing the aid nearly a dozen times in the preceding weeks after lower-level officials who worked on Ukraine issues began complaining about the holdup, Mr. Bolton wrote.

Mr. Trump had effectively rebuffed them, airing his longstanding grievances about Ukraine, which mixed legitimate efforts by some Ukrainians to back his Democratic 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, with unsupported accusations and outright conspiracy theories about the country, a key American ally.

Mr. Giuliani had also spent months stoking the president’s paranoia about the American ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie L. Yovanovitch, claiming that she was openly anti-Trump and needed to be dismissed. Mr. Trump had ordered her removed as early as April 2018 during a private dinner with two Giuliani a*sociates and others, a recording of the conversation made public on Saturday showed.

In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no a*sistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.

Mr. Bolton also described other key moments in the pressure campaign, including Mr. Pompeo’s private acknowledgment to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch had no basis and that Mr. Giuliani may have wanted her removed because she might have been targeting his clients who had dealings in Ukraine as she sought to f*ght corruption.

Ms. Yovanovitch, a Canadian immigrant whose parents fled the Soviet Union and Nazis, was a well-regarded career diplomat who was known as a vigorous f*ghter against corruption in Ukraine. She was abruptly removed last year and told the president had lost trust in her, even though a boss a*sured her she had “done nothing wrong.”

Mr. Bolton also said he warned White House lawyers that Mr. Giuliani might have been leveraging his work with the president to help his private clients.

At the impeachment trial, Mr. Trump himself had hoped to have his defense call a range of people to testify who had nothing to do with his efforts related to Ukraine, including Hunter Biden, to frame the case around Democrats. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, repeatedly told the president that witnesses could backfire, and the White House has followed his lead.

Mr. McConnell and other Republicans in the Senate, working in tandem with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, have spent weeks waging their own rhetorical battle to keep their colleagues within the party tent on the question of witnesses, with apparent success. Two of the four Republican senators publicly open to witness votes have sounded notes of skepticism in recent days about the wisdom of having the Senate compel testimony that the House did not get.

Since Mr. Bolton’s statement, White House advisers have floated the possibility that they could go to court to try to obtain a restraining order to stop him from speaking. Such an order would be unprecedented, but any attempt to secure it could succeed in tying up his testimony in legal limbo and scaring off Republican moderates wary of letting the trial drag on when its outcome appears clear.


Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

Trump’s Shadow Ukraine Agenda

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. Previously, she worked at Politico, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. @maggieNYT

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace s*xual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike

Access more of The Times by creating a free account or logging in.


 https://www.nytimes.com/2 .. core-ios-share