Bolton Blow Up

The National Interest

John Bolton Blows Up Trump Impeachment Defense on the Launchpad

By Jonathan Chait

When President Trump’s legal team unveiled its impeachment defense strategy on Saturday, the linchpin of the case was a small gap in the evidence. “Not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting or anything else,” said Mike Purpura. This statement, while constructed in the narrowest possible fashion, was literally correct. A wide swath of evidence has established that the Trump administration attempted to trade diplomatic favors with Ukraine for investigations. Several aides testified, or communicated to each other at the time, that they understood this to be the policy. Trump demanded the investigations in public, implicitly dangled them in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, and his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney publicly confirmed the quid pro quo in a press conference. But every one of these pieces of testimony, in one form or another, fell short of the standard of (1) being sworn testimony (2) by a person who spoke directly to Trump and (3) heard him explicitly condition the meeting and aid for the investigations. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with a single piece missing, the picture completely apparent. This vulnerability in the defense was already evident at the time. “Putting such an emphasis on ambiguities in Sondland’s testimony,” observed National Review editor Rich Lowry, “only makes sense if you are *absolutely certain* Bolton won’t testify.”