The Impeachment Trail: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton appears to know where the political bodies are buried, according to a letter from his lawyer to House impeachment investigators. 

  The lawyer, Charles Cooper, did not elaborate on what damning information Bolton might have to offer. What’s already apparent, though, is that Bolton had a rift with Trump and his lieutenants over dealings with Ukraine that led to Bolton’s resignation. 

  There was no doubt President Trump was demanding that Ukraine conduct politically-motivated investigations of his rival Joe Biden, according to the testimony of Army Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, a Ukraine expert who listened to President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

   The transcript of Vindman’s testimony was released yesterday, along with that of Fiona Hill, who also works for the National Security Council.

  Vindman said Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was explicit about the reasons for holding back nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine: “That the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens.” He said he believed Sondland referred to the Bidens by name. “There was no ambiguity,” Vindman said.

  The release of the transcripts came after acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney defied a subpoena and skipped a scheduled closed-door deposition at the Capitol. Mulvaney was one of the chief messengers for Trump’s Ukraine play.  

  Fiona Hill, in the transcript of her deposition, says then National Security Adviser Bolton was appalled at the notion of holding military aid hostage for political reasons and told her to report it to John Eisenberg, the top lawyer for the National Security Council. 

  “This is a direct quote from Ambassador Bolton,” Hill testified: “‘You go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.’”

  The President was still railing on yesterday, demanding to know the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the Ukraine investigation. Trump told reporters, “Everything he wrote in that report almost was a lie. Cause he made a phony phone call. My phone call was perfect and he made it sound bad.”

  Actually, so far, everything in the whistleblower report has proved to be true. 

China Syndrome: A day after the stock market spiked on news that the US and China were going to start rolling back tariffs as part of a trade deal, President Trump announced yesterday that he doesn’t know yet which, if any tariffs, he’s going to remove.

  The US has imposed tariffs on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods. China has been pushing to have some of the levies lifted as part of a preliminary deal. “They’d like to have a roll back — I have not agreed to anything,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House.

  The signals from the US and China are conflicting. Trump said, “China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback, because they know I won’t do it.”

The Vapor Trail: Vitamin E acetate, an ingredient added to marijuana-based vapor pods, has been identified as a “very strong culprit” in the vaping illnesses that have sickened 2,051 people and killed more than three dozen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced. 

 But the CDC cautioned that other chemicals or toxins could also be causing the severe respiratory illnesses. The report is based on fluid samples taken from the lungs of 29 patients who had the vaping-related lung disease.

  Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, said at a news briefing that the samples “provided evidence of vitamin E acetate at the primary site of injury in the lungs.”

The Bulletin Board: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg filed the paperwork to run in the 2020 Alabama presidential primary. That means he’s skipping the first four primaries and somehow thinking he can do an end run — With Republicans crying that the impeachment effort is purely political, the party has named the unquestioning Trump loyalist Rep. Jim Jordan to the House Intelligence Committee to make sure it’s political.

The Obit Page: Maria Perego, the puppeteer creator of the little mouse Topo Gigio that charmed Italy, and later became familiar to Americans on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the 1960s and early ’70s, died in Milan at age 95.

  The name Topo Gigio roughly translates to “Louie Mouse.” He required three puppeteers to make him move, and of course on the Sullivan show he needed a straight man and nobody was straighter than Sullivan.

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