Category: JohnBolton

Diplomats who risked their careers to tell the truth about Trump face life in a post-cover-up world

Posted on by Laura Clawson

One after another, career foreign service professionals came forward to testify about what they saw of Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine. They did so, they repeatedly stressed, not out of partisan motives but out of concern for national security. And they’re getting hung out to dry. In interviews with CNN, many of them expressed concern about their careers going forward, after Senate Republicans vote to acquit Trump, and about the damage done to U.S. foreign policy.

“All the carnage for something that doesn't mean very much,” said one. “Our domestic political battles have just trampled over what our national interests are.”

Some, CNN reports, are especially angry with former national security adviser John Bolton, who protected his own future in Republican circles by refusing to testify right up until Senate Republicans could block him from even being asked. Bolton was “trying to have it both ways,” said one of the officials who did testify. “Great. So our lives are ruined, our names dragged through the mud, but [Bolton] gets to wash his hands of it,” said another.

Looming over them is the concern that Trump, with his ever-growing enemies list, will retaliate against anyone who testified. “It would be bad politics for Trump to be seen as going after mid-level folks. And it would take effort,” said one. But “If he is reelected, he will feel emboldened, and this is where he could go after what he deemed the 'Deep State.’”

Moscow Mitch: Master of covering up Trump’s election cheating

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Moscow Mitch McConnell, so well-known for, among other things, his efforts to cover up Russia's interference on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, is now scorching the political ground of the Senate over the idea that an impeached Trump should be convicted and removed from office for trying to extort and bribe Ukraine into interfering on his behalf in 2020.

In a particularly loathsome and vile performance Tuesday, McConnell said, "It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid." Which is really a leap, since the majority of the American people support Trump's impeachment and at least pluralities support his removal from office. If the intelligence of the American people is being insulted here, it's by the travesty he and fellow Republicans are inflicting on the republic.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

"We must vote to reject the House's abuse of power," McConnell said, and "vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic." Yes, this is the same McConnell who has been coordinating with Trump's lawyers—including Pat Cipollone, who turned out to be a material witness to Trump's attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—at every step of the way in this process.

The man who says partisan fever "led to the most rushed, least fair and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history" is trying to keep "factional fever" from "scorching our Republic." That's really rich. There's only one answer from a smart American public: We end his Senate majority.

Plotting impeachment revenge, Trump ‘has an enemies list that is growing by the day’

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump is preparing his revenge against everyone who has crossed him. Just as he got on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and committed an impeachable offense the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress, Trump will take the success of the Senate Republican impeachment cover-up as license to commit new abuses of power and acts of personal retribution.

This is completely clear to anyone who’s observed Trump even casually, but Republican sources are also lining up to (anonymously) dish to reporters. “It’s payback time,” one “prominent Republican” told Vanity Fair, while, according to another source, “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day.”

Enemy No. 1 is former national security adviser John Bolton, who it seems is “going to go through some things.” In addition to the White House threatening Bolton’s publisher over the contents of his forthcoming book, Trump wants Bolton himself criminally investigated, a source told Gabriel Sherman. But even if a criminal investigation doesn’t materialize, “Trump has been calling people and telling them to go after Bolton.”

It’s not just Bolton, though. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney dared to vote for witnesses in the impeachment trial, so he’s in trouble. Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler led the impeachment inquiry and the team of House managers at the trial, so they’re on the enemies list.

It’s exactly what you’d expect from Trump. He expects to be free from any consequences for his actions, and anyone who threatens what he sees as his royal prerogative is going to be the target of his unhinged narcissistic rage. Expect the next several months to be even uglier than what we’ve already seen—but nothing compared to what will happen if he manages to cheat his way to a win in November.

Senate Republicans were on trial. They chose to betray America

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

If watching Senate Republicans turn a blind eye to duty, truth, their oaths of office, public opinion, and the well-being of the republic left you with a pit in your stomach this week, then rest assured that you are not alone. But while most Daily Kos readers knew the fix was in before the Senate charade ever started, many Americans likely did not. In poll after poll after, voters told pollsters that they wanted and in some polls expected to hear from witnesses. For starters, it was common sense. Everyone knows that trials include witnesses, and historically every single impeachment trial until now has also included witness testimony. 

Making matters worse for Senate Republicans, Donald Trump's defenders in the House had whined relentlessly about "second-, third-, fourth-, and fifthhand" witnesses. They made firsthand witnesses indispensable and suggested America would never know the truth without them. Even Trump spent a good portion of the fall and winter clamoring for witnesses once the impeachment inquiry reached the Senate, where finally things would be fair.

And almost magically, the star witness appeared: former White House national security adviser John Bolton. He was a West Wing insider with direct access to Trump and a veteran of every Republican administration dating back to Ronald Reagan. He was a conservative stalwart and rock-ribbed defense hawk with sterling cred among GOP lawmakers. Even better, progressives typically despised him, making him among the most trustworthy of witnesses among Republicans. And lo and behold, unlike other Trump officials, he was willing to talk and even said so in a statement issued right as the Senate got back to work in the New Year. What luck!

Now just imagine America's surprise as the perfect firsthand witness went untapped for weeks on end. After months of Trump hyping all that witness testimony in the Senate, he suddenly went cold on the idea. When his attorneys began to argue their case, the nation was told that House managers had utterly failed to prove Trump's guilt on one hand but that further inquiry was verboten on the other. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even tried to kill the mere prospect of witness testimony before the trial ever started, but he was ultimately reduced to making handwritten adjustments in the margins of his resolution so that calling witnesses could be considered after both impeachment teams had made their case. Apparently, even some members of McConnell's caucus didn't see how they could sell that preemptive gag order back home. 

As the trial ground on, suspense built with headlines emerging about what Bolton had committed to paper in his forthcoming book. First, the public learned Trump had told Bolton directly he wanted to continue withholding aid to Ukraine until the country's top officials started investigations into Democrats and, more specifically, the Bidens. Next, Bolton's manuscript expressed his distress over Trump granting personal favors to autocratic leaders in his view. Finally, as the trial headed toward that crucial vote on witness testimony Friday, another morning jolt brought news that White House counsel Pat Cipollone—Trump's lead attorney at the trial—had witnessed Trump ordering Bolton to help with his pressure campaign by facilitating a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Rudy Giuliani. 

As if all that wasn't enough, news also broke Friday that Giuliani associate Lev Parnas was prepared to detail the entire conspiracy in testimony, front to back, with receipts. As former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance noted on MSNBC, "This is a prosecutor's dream, right? You've actually got Lev Parnas and John Bolton in a bidding war over who gets to be your star witness." Wow, how could Republicans possibly pass up the wealth of information beating down the doors to the Senate chamber? 

And yet, that's exactly what they voted to do late Friday. In the face of polls showing nearly three-quarters of the country agreed on the need for witnesses, Senate Republicans turned their backs on America. Sure, they're public servants who've been entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the Constitution. But when the time came to take a principled stand, they saluted to Individual 1, circled the wagons, and deep-sixed testimony for the remainder of the trial. All that's left of the Senate proceeding is a bunch of self-gratifying speechifying as Senate Republicans try to recast their cowardice in acceptable terms. 

The cover-up is complete. And it wasn't just helpful to Trump, it was an absolute necessity. If Bolton had testified, he would have implicated multiple Trump officials in Trump's scheme, including Cipollone, Trump's chief defense attorney. Just to be clear, most legal scholars were aghast that anyone from the White House counsel's office was defending Trump in the first place. It's a taxpayer-funded position charged with representing the Office of the President, not the president him/herself. But what we know now is that he wasn't just protecting Trump, he was protecting himself, serving himself—on the taxpayers' dime. Trump's Ukraine conspiracy was a global effort among his top advisers. Everyone knew, even the White House counsel (who, by the way, is supposedly leading an inquiry into who put the transcript of Trump's July 25th call with President Volodymyr Zelensky into the super secret server.)  Or as Gordon Sondland said repeatedly, "Everyone was in the loop." Yet, among Trump's looped-in top advisers, only one person is willing to talk.

As a matter of civic service, the nation could have benefited from hearing Bolton's truth during the Senate trial. Some Americans who had not followed the House hearing closely enough to see how corrosive Trump's actions were would have walked away better informed about the unimaginable danger he poses to the nation.

But politically speaking, this proceeding was never about putting Trump on trial—everyone who had been paying attention knew the outcome in advance, including Nancy Pelosi. It was about putting the GOP-led Senate on trial. That's why Pelosi held the articles of impeachment for nearly a month, so she could frame the proceeding as a referendum on Senate Republicans. And guess what? They failed spectacularly in a disgraceful show of craven hubris. They couldn't even fake impartiality long enough to allow for witnesses to be heard. In the end, they offered America no justice—no feeling of finality—just a hollow sense of being wronged with no recourse. 

But here's the silver lining: During a time when Washington commanded the attention of most Americans and when polling consistently showed that voters overwhelmingly craved resolution, Senate Republicans exposed themselves a nothing short of tools of Trump's regime. They no longer serve the people, they serve him and him only.

Pundits across spectrum smelled trouble for Senate Republicans. "I think (McConnell) underestimates the backlash to this vote," conservative radio host Charlie Sykes told MSNBC. "I think people are going to be a lot more angry about this vote on the witnesses than folks in Washington really understand. And it really does put the Senate in play."

Former GOP operative Nicolle Wallace called the vote “political suicide,” adding, “I hope they take it." They did.

So as we enter the start of the Democratic nomination contest in earnest on Monday, bundle up all that rage and take it to the polls. Let it drive your engagement and participation throughout the rest of the year until Election Day.

"Never stop being a prisoner of hope," Sen. Cory Booker told MSNBC this week at a dark moment, invoking the resolve shown throughout history after the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Birmingham Church bombing, and the showdown at Stonewall. "This election is about so much more now than a choice between a Democrat and Republican president."

New Bolton revelation: ‘The kind of bombshell Mitch McConnell has been afraid of all along’

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Former national security adviser John Bolton’s new revelation about White House counsel Pat Cipollone being in on Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy as early as May 2019 is dropping like a bomb on Washington. "This is the kind of bombshell that Mitch McConnell has been afraid of all along," reporter Kasie Hunt said on MSNBC.

Indeed, a day that seemed almost certainly headed toward a no-witness vote and fast acquittal just in time for Donald Trump’s victory laps on Fox News and at next week’s State of the Union address now holds a slew of question marks. Hill reporters are now musing that the Senate trial could go into next week, “maybe even mid-week,” tweeted Politico’s John Bresnahan. Trump’s already in damage control, tweeting out fantasies like a drunken sailor on hallucinogens. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski still hasn’t announced her vote on witnesses, which is bad news for McConnell because she hasn’t owed the GOP caucus anything since 2010, when she won reelection as a write-in candidate. Murkowski’s now a “no” on witnesses.

As Americans, we should still be rooting for witnesses. The citizenry deserves to hear from Bolton in his own words, among others.

But as Democrats, we can also feast on the political peril this represents for Republicans, who have now admitted that Trump did everything House managers said he did and that they just don’t care. As commentators on MSNBC absorbed the new Bolton bombshell, they almost unanimously declared it an electoral disaster in the making for Senate Republicans, especially given where public opinion has been on witnesses all along. 

"This makes that vote against witnesses political suicide,” former GOP operative Nicolle Wallace observed, adding, “I hope they take it."

Even former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill was bullish on the prospects for Democrats. “If these Republicans shut this trial down and say, No more,” she said, “it is a great gift to the Democrats in November.”

As Sen. Kamala Harris noted before the news dropped, "There can be no true exoneration if there's not been a fair trial. Period." Now more than ever, Senate Republicans are also on trial. At least some of them seem to know it.

Cartoon: The Grand Ol’ Adaptable Party

Posted on by Mark Fiore

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With each new revelation or bit of evidence, Republicans in the Senate (and the House, for that matter), soften their spines a little more. Remember when Lindsey Graham thought withholding an Oval Office meeting wasn’t that big of a deal but withholding military aid, well, that would be just wrong!

It really has come down to the “So What?” defense for Donald Trump and his supporters. Wrapped in a little Alan Dershowitz legalese about the Founders only intending to impeach a president who robbed a bank for his own personal gain, and it’s looking even more likely Senate Republicans won’t budge.

Apparently a president has to say “I am presently going to commit high crimes and misdemeanors” while the offending act is witnessed by a Senate Sergeant at Arms in order to be convicted and removed from office. Enjoy the cartoon, and keep those fingers and toes crossed. (And be sure to visit me over on Patreon for prints, sketches and other behind-the-scenes goodies!)

Drip, drip, drip: Top House Democrat reveals Bolton expressed deep concern about Trump, Ukraine

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

As Senate Republicans attempt to recover from their tailspin in arguments over calling former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, new information emerged Wednesday directly refuting Trump's assertion that Bolton never expressed concern about his Ukraine policy at the time.

In a statement Wednesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel relayed that Bolton "strongly implied" in a Sept. 23 phone call with him that Trump's ouster of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was improper. “On that call, Ambassador Bolton suggested to me — unprompted — that the committee look into the recall of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch,” Engel said of a phone call between the two men. "He strongly implied that something improper had occurred around her removal as our top diplomat in Kyiv.”

In an attempt to dismiss Bolton's bombshell book excerpts, Trump tweeted Tuesday night that Bolton had said "NOTHING" about his Ukraine policy when Bolton was ousted from the White House last September. "Why didn’t John Bolton complain about this 'nonsense' a long time ago," Trump tweeted. Well, good news, Trump! He did. In fact, Bolton's use of the word "improper" implies that he may have even wondered whether Trump had done something illegal. 

Engel said he had contacted Bolton following his departure from the White House to thank him for his service when Bolton offered the information about Yovanovitch unsolicited. Engel added that he didn't speak publicly about Bolton's disclosure at the time, although he did share the information with his colleagues who were running investigations of Trump. "It was one of the reasons we wished to hear from Ambassador Bolton, under oath, in a formal setting," Engel said. Of course, Bolton refused that invitation at the time.

Now, however, Bolton has offered to testify under oath if subpoenaed by the Senate, leaving Senate Republicans in quite the bind after leaked excerpts of his book revealed that Trump told him directly that he wanted aid withheld from Ukraine until its officials undertook the investigations he wanted.

As Engel noted, Bolton has made clear that he has "more to say on the issue," and he deserves the chance to say it, particularly since Trump has smeared his account. "It's telling that, of all people, John Bolton is now the target of right-wing ire," Engel said, adding that the smears have only heightened the need to hear his testimony. 

Republicans have surrendered on Trump’s guilt. They’re making a last stand with ‘So what if he did?’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Reporting on whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has secured enough support to shut down the possibility of witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump is all over the map. Some reports have insisted that “10 or 12” Republicans are actually looking fearfully at the overwhelming public opinion in favor of witnesses, while other reports have been just as insistent that McConnell has waved enough head-pikes to successfully keep rebellion clear of dastardly facts.

But whether or not Bolton ever takes the stand in the Senate, one thing has become absolutely clear: Republicans have completely given up on the idea of claiming that Donald Trump did not extort Ukraine to gain a personal political advantage. Forget the “perfect call.” Republicans up and down the line may still be afraid to gain the Twit-ire of Trump by declaring his guilt, but the official position has moved completely away from the idea that Trump did nothing wrong and solidly into camp “So what?”

To see where Republicans are takes no more than reading the first sentence of this quote from Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana: “Let’s say it’s true, okay? Dershowitz last night explained that if you’re looking at it from a constitutional point of view, that that is not something that is impeachable.” The explanation of Alan Dershowitz, a criminal attorney playing constitutional expert on TV (with underwear on), was clearly ridiculous on its face, and hundreds of experts have said so explicitly.

But the terrible fact for a Republican Party facing a severe fact shortage is that the public is more easily confused on this point than they are on Trump’s guilt. In other words, every real constitutional expert in the nation is united around the idea that abuse of power and obstruction of justice are valid reasons for a politician to be impeached and removed. But it’s easier to pretend that that is not true than it is to keep pretending that Donald Trump did not commit extortion in the face of not just Bolton’s testimony, but also the mass of evidence presented by House managers.

Bolton’s evidence may be the tipping point, but Republicans are aware that the case against Trump has been both overwhelming and compelling from the outset—which is why the “defense” of Trump was primarily focused not on proving his innocence, but on pretending that extorting foreign involvement in an election is a perfectly valid activity.

Now, no matter how Republicans eventually vote, no matter how hard Trump tries to suppress Bolton’s manuscript, it’s clear enough that this information is going to come out. Which makes it absolutely pointless to defend Trump on the basis that he did nothing wrong.

That’s why even Lindsey Graham has given up on sticking his fingers in his ears and pretending that he has heard no evidence against Trump. Instead, Graham says, “For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.”

”Let’s say it’s true, okay?” says Braun. ”For the sake of argument,” says Graham. If there have ever been bigger verbal white flags, they were probably waved on a battleship where someone was signing a treaty of surrender.

Republicans aren’t going to the “So what?” position because they feel it’s strong. They know it’s not strong. They’re going there because it is all they have left.

Ted Cruz: “Quid pro quo doesn’t matter. It’s a red herring. It doesn’t matter if there was a quid pro quo or not.”

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Spoiler alert: Senate Republicans are screwed no matter what they do

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Senate Republicans seem to have finally gamed out the witness situation in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump at least a couple months past the actual vote—and they are in deep doo doo, to use a technical turn of phrase. Whether or not former national security adviser John Bolton appears as a witness in the Senate trial, his account is going to come out in book form mere months from now. As my colleague Mark Sumner writes, that's exactly why Senate Republicans are newly trying to sell the fantastical reasoning that Bolton's account doesn't matter one way or other, no matter what he ultimately says. That way, whether Americans get Bolton's account through testimony now or through his prose months from now, Senate Republicans can dismiss it as irrelevant to the matter of Trump’s removal from office. Again, this is an otherworldly take in which Trump is king and above the law, and Republicans completely shred the Constitution and everything it stands for in support of the most incompetent and corrupt president America has ever seen.

Now, as a practical matter, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't currently have the votes to quash Bolton’s testimony, as he has said. But why end the bluff now? First, so that the White House and other Trump cultists can apply maximal pressure to the Republicans who are potentially poised to make the rest of the GOP caucus look horrible by voting in favor of the only intellectually honest thing to do—hear from witnesses. McConnell's other concern is that he's up for reelection back home, where he's deeply unpopular, and he doesn't want to be caught solely holding the bag for losing this critical vote.

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All that said, anything can happen over the next couple of days of questioning in the Senate trial, which, it's worth remembering, will be curated by McConnell and will not be an organic process by any means. Nonetheless, perhaps more information à la another Bolton excerpt or a Lev Parnas interview will drop, completely roiling the GOP caucus. Or not. Although Utah Sen. Mitt Romney continues to say he wants to hear from witnesses, perhaps Trump's maximal pressure campaign will squelch the Romney faction, leaving only Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (for process reasons) and Maine Sen. Susan Collins (for electoral reasons) to vote with Romney. That would leave the witness faction one vote shy of the four Republican votes necessary.

Whatever happens, my personal belief is that Senate Republicans will either fall short of what's needed to call witnesses or end up with more than four votes. No one wants to be tagged as being the "fourth vote," but if it starts to become clear in hushed conversations that the votes are there, then the witness faction will likely pick up several more votes rather than just one. People such as Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman are potential additions, more for legacy reasons than anything else. And perhaps a vulnerable Republican such as North Carolina's Thom Tillis will join Collins in determining that a no vote on witnesses would be nearly impossible to defend. But again, outside of Collins, most vulnerable Republican Senators (e.g., Tillis, McSally, Gardner) appear to have determined that hugging Trump is the only way to win reelection (or perhaps lose but still have a future in GOP circles). In any case, my guess would be that the witness vote either falls short or draws four-plus support, depending on what happens between now and Friday.

Now for a couple of side notes: Don't fall for any of this ridiculous "witness trade" talk. Not only would it be stupid for Democrats to welcome a materially irrelevant witness like Hunter Biden in order to hear from Bolton, but the whole concept of a trade is a red herring. If Republicans have the votes to call Hunter Biden or Adam Schiff, they could and can do it. They have enough people in their caucus to authorize those witnesses without getting Democrats to sign off on it. So just let them stew in their juices over that. Democrats should remain focused on Bolton. And, as Schiff pointed out Tuesday, if they want a 1-for-1 trade, let them call someone relevant, such as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who has contradicted Bolton's account.

Finally, let's remember where this entire inquiry started—it was deemed a plank walk for Democrats at the outset when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi first announced it last fall. But she has played it masterfully, threading the needles of duty, oath of office, and public opinion all the way through. House Democrats managed to execute an inquiry that was seen as fair and has convinced a majority of the public that Trump should be removed from office, according to a preponderance of polling over the last month. Senate Republicans, at the moment, are now on the wrong side of the polling no matter what they do—whether they vote for witnesses and then acquit or forgo witnesses altogether and then acquit. Frankly, forgoing witnesses is their worst option, as a national consensus has emerged that witness testimony must be heard. If Senate Republicans choose to ignore some 70% of the population, they will pay the price at the ballot box in November. However, if they vote for witnesses, it opens a Pandora's box and McConnell loses control of the process. Win-win for Democrats. 

Ultimately, regardless of what Senate Republicans do, House Democrats still have the final play. If they aren't satisfied with the process the GOP-led Senate has undertaken, Pelosi and Schiff now have more reason than ever to subpoena Bolton's testimony. No one can be 100% sure of what Bolton would say under oath, but House Democrats still have the opportunity to have the final say on what the public hears when Senate Republicans conclude their sham trial. That's pretty damn close to a checkmate in terms of congressional chess-playing. 

White House reportedly issues ‘formal threat’ to block John Bolton from publishing book

Posted on by Laura Clawson

The Trump White House is trying to stop former national security adviser John Bolton’s book from being published, CNN is reporting. The “formal threat” comes in the form of a letter, CNN’s sources say, but none of the parties involved—the White House, Bolton himself, or his publisher, Simon & Schuster—commented.

As Karen Tumulty tweeted, get ready for the advertising campaign dubbing this “the book the White House doesn’t want you to read,” but what the United States needs is not Bolton’s book, it’s Bolton’s testimony.

Bolton is a warmonger with blood on his hands and decades of faithful service to the Republican cause. But here, he has information the country needs to hear, not by giving him money for a book but under oath in the impeachment trial. The White House threat is not, most likely, about the book itself, either. It’s about sending a message to Republican senators not to vote to hear him, and to make regular people think of him as tainted.

The White House needs to discredit Bolton somehow, with polls showing big majorities in support of witnesses at the impeachment trial. Putting a cloud over him separate from the Senate vote on witnesses is the first move. There will be more—but all the people watching the White House campaign against Bolton need to remember that it’s not about him. It’s about what he witnessed Donald Trump saying and doing during his time as Trump’s close adviser.

Update:

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