John Bolton just made it official [update: maybe not]
Donald Trump has been having a really bad day. He’s lost a crucial appeals court ruling. He’s seen incriminating impeachment transcripts released. He’s seen Lev Parnas apparently flip on him and Rudy Giuliani. Now Trump has a whole other kind of problem. It’s one we saw coming, but it’s nonetheless remarkable – and devastating.
John Bolton has officially agreed to testify to the House impeachment inquiry this Thursday, according to BuzzFeed.. This is crucial for a few reasons. First, Bolton can corroborate much of the testimony that’s already been given by his former underlings like Fiona Hill and Colonel Vindman.
Second, Bolton worked much more closely with Trump than anyone who has testified thus far, and therefore he likely knows a lot about the Ukraine scandal that the other witnesses don’t. Third, Bolton is well known by the public as a far-right conservative figure, so Trump will have an awfully hard time trying to spin Bolton as being part of some kind of liberal or Democratic Party conspiracy.
Of course John Bolton telegraphed this days ago when he had his attorney publicly announce that Bolton wouldn’t voluntarily testify, but that he would accept a subpoena to testify. To be clear, while it’s theoretically possible that Bolton could change his mind of his own accord for some reason between now and Thursday, Donald Trump has absolutely no recourse for stopping Bolton from testifying. The Trump White House already ordered Bolton not to testify awhile ago, and Bolton has clearly already laughed that off. Update, 9:51pm: Axios now claims that Bolton has “no plans to testify.” You can find our best attempt at parsing this here.
