The Republican game is insisting somehow that now that John Bolton is willing to speak, it’s too late, on the basis of a principle they invented yesterday. jonathanchait writes
Former national security adviser John Bolton Photo: Oliver Contreras/Getty Images When a parade of witnesses defied the White House to testify about the administration’s plot to turn Ukraine policy into a lever to dirty up President Trump’s domestic enemies, Republicans dismissed it all as secondhand information. None of them had spoken directly to Trump, except Gordon Sondland, whose memory of such discussions proved fuzzy.
The rule requiring the Senate to limit its evidence to that which the House has already gathered does not exist. The Senate rules for impeachment trials explicitly allow for bringing witnesses and testimony. Some Republicans have cited the precedent of the Clinton impeachment. “The Senate has a unanimous, bipartisan precedent for when to handle midtrial questions such as witnesses: in the middle of the trial,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Hewitt: Now yesterday, an old friend of mine, Ambassador John Bolton, said he’d be available to testify. I laughed when I saw that. That’s John Bolton doing three things – selling books, raising money for BoltonPAC so he can support great conservatives like you, and daring and hoping that the Democrats will throw him into the briar patch, because if he gets asked questions through the Chief Justice, they’re going to get lectures on appeasement.
Hewitt and Cornyn agreed that Bolton, as a “patriot” and a “smart guy,” will not want to provide any damaging testimony. That would run against a great deal of public reporting on Bolton’s perspective. Bolton was reported by firsthand witnesses to have described the Ukraine extortion scheme as a “drug deal,” and “former White House officials and people close to Mr. Bolton” told the New York Times yesterday that “his testimony would most likely be damning to Mr.
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