Last fall, as one witness after another testified to House lawmakers about Donald Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine for personal gain, spineless Republicans insisted that none of the incredibly damning evidence meant anything because the individuals providing the information supposedly only came by it secondhand. That argument was ridiculous from the start, considering that the various testimonies were from diplomats and government officials who most certainly knew a thing or two about the president’s abuse of power, including the E.U. ambassador with whom he had a loud phone conversation re: pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, and the former Ukraine ambassador who was personally taken out of the equation by the president’s goons in order to make the corruption run more smoothly. Also: The White House, from which Republicans took their cues, had stonewalled any and all attempts to hear testimony from people with the kind of firsthand accounts that would apparently pass muster, like acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and, in particular, former national security adviser John Bolton. But as the old saying goes, wait around long enough and an account by someone who definitely has firsthand information will show up in the form of a tell-all leaked the same week that Senate Republicans try to silence witnesses and acquit the president.

We refer, of course, to Bolton’s book—delightfully named The Room Where It Happened—a manuscript of which made its way to the New York Times over the weekend. One notable anecdote happened to involve Trump telling the former adviser that he would not release aid to Ukraine until it did his bidding:

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, New Jersey. Mr. Bolton raised the $391 million in congressionally appropriated assistance 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 Kiev, 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 long-standing 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.

In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories [Rudy] Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no assistance 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.

This account quite clearly undercuts one of the major elements of Trump’s impeachment defense, which is that the freeze on the aid had nothing to do with his desire to hurt his domestic rivals and everything to do with a not-at-all-believable wish to root out corruption in Ukraine. (The president’s allies have long tried to make this defense stick, adding that the holdup in delivering the aid is a moot point anyway because it was eventually released, and not mentioning that it was conveniently unfrozen just days after the White House learned of the whistle-blower complaint, or the minor matter of Trump being told the freeze was illegal and pushing for it anyway.)

The revelations in Bolton’s book have obviously come at a rather inopportune time for both the White House and Republicans, who are trying to wrap up this impeachment business by Friday. Unsurprisingly, Trump has responded to what is effectively a smoking gun with a series of angry tweets painting Bolton as a disgruntled ex-employee, doubling down on his allegedly perfect phone call, and sprinkling in some easily debunked lies to boot:

The book, of course, has put Republicans in the increasingly tough position of not only defending an obviously guilty man, but refusing to even allow witnesses to be heard. According to Times reporter Maggie Haberman, several Republicans have “angrily called the White House trying to determine who at the administration knew about Mr. Bolton’s manuscript, which aides there have had for several weeks, and what was in it.” Those lawmakers are said to feel “blindsided” by the account, in part because it makes them look really bad for sticking with Trump. (Per Haberman: “One reason for their ire is that Mr. Bolton’s account flies in the face of the rationale the president’s lawyers have offered the Senate for his actions, and which many Republicans have latched onto themselves as a defense of his conduct.”) Mitt Romney, one of the four senators Democrats are hoping to convince to vote with the other side, said Monday that it’s “increasingly likely” more Republicans will vote to hear testimony from Bolton.

Of course, everything said by the senator from Utah must be taken with several mines’ worth of salt, and one can never underestimate the lengths to which the GOP will go to cover for Trump. According to Axios, party leaders will likely continue to resist calling witnesses because “‘there is a sense in the Senate that if one witness is allowed, the floodgates are open,’” as one Republican aide put it. And if that doesn’t work, the White House has another plan:

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.

The White House did not respond to the Times’s questions about Bolton’s assertions.

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