John Bolton appears at a Viktor Pinchuk Foundation event in Ukraine on September 18, 2017. (Credit: Viktor Pinchuk Foundation)
“Former White House national security adviser John Bolton pocketed $115,000 from Ukrainian steel oligarch Viktor Pinchuk’s foundation shortly before entering President Donald Trump’s White House as national security adviser, a position first held in the Trump White House by General Michael Flynn. Bolton’s unpublished manuscript reportedly accuses Trump of wanting to withhold military aid to Ukraine, but Trump denies this had anything to do with a Quid Pro Quo situation. Democrats are clamoring to call Bolton as a witness in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial regarding his alleged pressuring of the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden’s alleged corruption in the country’s oil and gas industry. Ukraine’s president Zelensky adamantly denies that Trump pressured him.
Former Bush UN ambassador Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton is known as a rabid neoconservative interventionist. President Donald Trump fired Bolton and cited his opposition to Bolton’s establishment foreign policy views, accusing Bolton of undermining his negotiations with the North Korean regime.
The neocon wing strongly supports the U.S. funding and arming of Ukraine to challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an oil exporter who is hated by the Washington foreign policy establishment.
A financial disclosure shows that Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation for a pair of speeches in September 2017 and February 2018.
At the former speech in Kiev, Bolton sat on a panel and basically expressed that the national security establishment would not allow Trump to become unconventional on policy, stating, “The notion that [Trump’s presidency] is going to represent a dramatic break in foreign policy is just wrong. Calm down, for God’s sake.”
As the Washington Post noted, Pinchuk has exceeded $10 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.” (Read more: National File, 1/28/2020) (Archive)