John Bolton just blew it
For reasons that are still only fully understood to him, John Bolton wants to wait to testify in the House impeachment hearings until a judge orders that former White House officials should testify. It now looks like that ruling is coming down on Monday. The thing is, based on today’s testimony, Bolton blew it by waiting.
During his testimony today, Gordon Sondland directly implicated the likes of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine extortion plot. Sondland also made a point of taking a subtle yet unmistakable shot at John Bolton, by stressing how “odd” it was that Bolton’s office asked him for Giuliani’s contact information. Rudy was the most criminally out of control of Trump’s underlings in this scandal, so this raises questions about whether Bolton was trying to reach Rudy for corrupt reasons.
This alone doesn’t come anywhere close to incriminating John Bolton. But it may be enough to steer the media in the direction of digging up just why Bolton was trying to reach Rudy Giuliani in the midst of this criminal scandal. This means Bolton almost has to testify now – and soon – before the media starts writing the narrative about him that Sondland wants written.
We don’t know why Gordon Sondland did this to John Bolton today. Maybe Sondland knows something we don’t about Bolton’s actions, or maybe Sondland just wanted to get back at Bolton for having been such a thorn in his side. Either way, Bolton would have been much better off if he’d testified before Sondland did. Now Bolton will have to, at least some degree, play defense. Bolton blew it. He probably knows it too.
