Bill Barr suddenly has a huge John Bolton problem
Last night’s bombshell revelation from John Bolton’s book is obviously bad news for a number of people. It’s devastating for Donald Trump, for obvious reasons. It’s ugly for Republican Senators, who are now faced with even more of a no-win situation when it comes to whether they want to call Bolton to testify against Trump, or whether they want voters to see them as complicit in protecting Trump. But someone else also suddenly has a big problem thanks to Bolton.
According to last night’s New York Times report, John Bolton says in his new book that after Donald Trump mentioned Bill Barr’s name to Ukrainian President Zelensky, he immediately informed Barr that this had happened. But as one of the authors of the NYT article points out, Barr and his DOJ had previously claimed that Barr had no knowledge of any of it until the whistleblower report came along.
If John Bolton is to be believed, this means that Donald Trump asked Ukraine to criminally conspire with Bill Barr, then Trump immediately told Barr that he was expected to conspire with Ukraine – and after the scandal became public, Barr lied about it. That’s not surprising, considering that Barr was a knowing participant in a felony conspiracy against the United States.
If it wasn’t already a given that the post-Trump iteration of the Department of Justice was going to criminally indict Bill Barr, this would seem to all but seal it. If Donald Trump loses the election in 2020, Barr will be indicted and arrested. And when he goes on trial, John Bolton will presumably be called as a star witness against him. That’s before getting to Trump’s own arrest and criminal trial.
