John Bolton just became Trump and the GOP's worst nightmare

REUTERS/Leah Millis

President Donald Trump listens as his National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks during a presidential memorandum signing for the "Women's Global Development and Prosperity" initiative in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2019.

• John Bolton, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, announced on Monday that he's willing to testify in the impending Senate impeachment trial, even if the president opposes it.
• Bolton's unexpected move took Washington by storm and is now the biggest thorn in the side of congressional Republicans.
• The GOP for weeks accused House Democrats of holding hearings with witnesses who only provided "hearsay" instead of those with direct knowledge of events at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
• But Bolton, if he testifies, could be the president's worst nightmare. Not only does he have firsthand information about events relevant to the investigation, but as the former national security adviser, he would be the most high profile witness to testify against Trump.
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John Bolton, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, announced on Monday that he's willing to testify in the impending Senate impeachment trial, even if the president opposes it.

"If the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify," Bolton said in a statement.

The former national security adviser's unexpected statement took Washington by storm and is now the biggest thorn in the side of congressional Republicans.

Shortly after Bolton's announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the upper chamber would move forward with a trial without calling witnesses - a central request from congressional Democrats - and decide on the question once the trial is underway, similar to the process during President Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings in 1998.

Some more moderate and vulnerable Senate Republicans - including Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski - said they support McConnell's decision to force a trial without guaranteeing the Senate will call witnesses.

However, McConnell added that he can't move forward on the resolution determining the rules of the trial until after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi transmits the two articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate.

Pelosi, meanwhile, said she will send them over soon, but only after Senate Republicans make public the rules of procedure for Trump's trial.

Bolton's statement is a potential wildcard in the impeachment fight and increases pressure on moderate and vulnerable Republican senators to take a more clear stance on whether to call witnesses.

"By wholly dismissing witnesses, even those with direct knowledge of the allegations, Republicans are demonstrating to their constituents that they are shills for the president," Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist and DC-based consultant, told Insider. "That might be okay in red states, but if you are a Senate Republican from a purple state with a tough race in 2020 it will harder to justify."

Greg Sargent, a Washington Post opinion columnist, argued that if Senate Republicans succeed in acquitting Trump without hearing from key witnesses, "the whole affair will be forever stained by the indelible fact that they could only exonerate Trump by refusing to permit a full reckoning - and refusing to hear the very sort of testimony they themselves claimed to want for months."

Indeed, with Bolton, Democrats now have a key witness - someone with direct knowledge of Trump's dealings with Ukraine - ready and willing to make what could be very damaging claims against the president. And Republicans are poised to deny Bolton the chance to divulge information about what Bolton's lawyer has said are "many relevant meetings and conversations."

Reuters

President Trump arrives for closed Senate Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington

"The testimony & evidence considered in a Senate impeachment trial should be the same testimony & evidence the House relied upon when they passed the Articles of Impeachment," Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, tweeted on Monday. "Our job is to vote on what the House passed, not to conduct an open ended inquiry."

Republicans say they're confident the party will stay united through the trial.

"Lisa Murkowski's announcement that she supports Majority Leader McConnell's request that a vote on witnesses occur mid-trial, just as it did in the Clinton impeachment is far more important than Bolton's announcement," Matt Mackowiak, a conservative strategist, told Insider. "Pelosi has no leverage over McConnell and both sides know it."

Bolton could be the single most dangerous witness against Trump

Throughout the battle over impeachment, Republicans have argued that Democrats held hearings with witnesses who only provided "hearsay" rather than witnesses with direct knowledge of the events at the center of the inquiry.

Yet they refused to acknowledge that the very reason some of those direct witnesses didn't testify was because the White House itself barred them from appearing at Trump's order.

Bolton, if he testifies, could be the president's worst nightmare. As the former national security adviser, he would be the most high profile witness to testify against Trump and one who held frequent meetings with him.

• He attended a July 10 meeting at a White House policy meeting between senior US and Ukrainian officials. Gordon Sondland, the US's ambassador to the EU, hijacked the meeting when he told the Ukrainians that Trump wanted a "deliverable" - specifically, politically motivated investigations - in exchange for a White House meeting.
  • Bolton immediately cut the meeting short at that point and informed Fiona Hill, who at the time was the National Security Council's senior director in charge of Russian and Eurasian affairs, to "tell the lawyers" what had happened.
  • According to Hill's testimony, Bolton ordered her to tell John Eisenberg, the NSC's chief counsel, that he was not part of "whatever drug deal" Sondland and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, were "cooking up in Ukraine."
• Bolton was staunchly opposed to Trump making the infamous July 25 phone call to Zelensky.
  • Hill and other witnesses testified that Bolton was against the phone call because he feared the president would use it to air his personal grievances to Zelensky, which is exactly what ended up happening.
• The former national security adviser described Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer who's spearheaded what witnesses have said was the "irregular channel" of foreign policy in Ukraine, as a "hand grenade." He was also opposed to the smear campaign Giuliani and Trump carried out against Marie Yovanovitch, who at the time was the US's ambassador to Ukraine.
  • Asked why Bolton described Giuliani as a "hand grenade," Hill told Congress the former New York mayor was "clearly pushing forward" issues that would "probably come back to haunt us. That's where we are today."
• Bolton's lawyer dropped a tantalizing hint in a letter to Congress earlier this month indicating that Bolton knows even more than what's already been revealed.
  • Bolton "was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far," Chuck Cooper, Bolton's attorney, wrote.
• Bolton has receipts.
  • Current and former senior administration officials told Axios that people in Trump's orbit are terrified of what Bolton may have documented and what he might divulge.
  • According to Axios, Bolton is a prolific note-taker and likely has more details than any witness in the impeachment inquiry so far about Trump's shadow campaign in Ukraine.
  • "Bolton was a voracious note-taker, in every meeting," one source who attended several meetings with the former national security adviser told Axios. Apparently, while others sat and listened in meetings with the president, Bolton "distinguished himself by filling legal pads with contemporaneous notes on what was said in the room."

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