Taylor testified that there was a direct link between the aid and the desire for a promise of “investigations” — and Trump had ordered it all.

Bolton found all of this troubling.

“John gets a lot of bad press, and I think, thank God John was there,” said Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy in George W. Bush administration. “There are a lot of people who were very negative about John, but I think on all the big issues — North Korea, Iran, this Ukraine-Russia stuff — I think, by and large, John was on the side of the angels and trying to keep the president from going outside of bounds.”…

“To the extent that he can help shape or influence or minimize the damage that Trump potentially could do, the ambassador feels he has a patriotic duty to do so,” Groombridge said of Bolton, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Bush. “And while John will salute and follow the president, he will have a very difficult time squaring his own personal beliefs and convictions with a deal that he thinks is fundamentally not in U.S. interests.”