Former national security adviser John Bolton has thrown a grenade into Mitch McConnell’s plans to hold a Senate “trial” of President Trump without allowing new witnesses. The thoughtful and patriotic Bolton was right to announce on Monday that he is willing to testify if the Senate calls him.
From the first day that the Trump-Ukraine controversy erupted, Bolton has been the single-most important witness in the case. Not only was he, by virtue of his job title alone, at or near the fulcrum of Trump’s decision-making, but the timing of his resignation (or firing) from the administration also suggests that Ukrainian policy disputes were among the top reasons for his split from the president. The whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s actions was made public the day before Bolton resigned, and Trump finally released the long-delayed military assistance the day after.
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Later testimony by others made clear that Bolton vociferously opposed the Ukrainian-related conduct of Trump and his minions, once derisively likening the conduct to a “drug deal” and advising other aides to seek legal counsel before becoming enmeshed in some aspects of it.
Yet until now, Bolton had declined to testify, citing Trump’s directive not to do so. He said he would await a court decision as to whether he owed obeisance to Trump’s order or instead to a congressional subpoena, if one came. As Bolton was a longtime advocate of presidential prerogatives, his interim decision not to testify to the House was an intellectually consistent one.
As it happened, legal maneuvering by both the House and the president led the court case to be mooted without a judicial decision on the merits. This put the ball back in Bolton’s court without giving him clear guidance.
Bolton said he then gave the matter “careful consideration and study.” He surely knows that the power of Congress to compel executive branch testimony is at its greatest in the case of a presidential impeachment trial and that the Senate’s existing rules on impeachment trials say the Senate has the “power to compel the attendance of witnesses” and to “punish” disobedience to its orders. That, and the intense importance of the public’s right to know the facts surrounding any matter serious enough to threaten the removal of a president from office, led Bolton to conclude he should testify if the Senate subpoenas him.
The House should have waited for the court case to be resolved, so it could secure Bolton’s testimony before impeaching Trump. Then again, there was no way to know how long that decision or any appeals to it would take. So the House did what it did, but the Senate’s duty is to ascertain facts, evidence, and truth, not merely to rely on the initial House inquiry.
In most American legal arenas, it would be ludicrous to suggest all evidence or witnesses must be presented in preliminary hearings, before the full trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was dreadfully wrong from the start to say he might hold a trial without witnesses. Now, though, his excuses have run out.
Bolton’s legal status has changed as a result of the judge’s Dec. 30 decision that the related subpoena case be mooted. His new willingness to testify is entirely and logically consonant with that decision. It is also indisputable that Bolton’s testimony is crucial to understanding all the events at issue and their context. With Bolton now available to the Senate without the need of a separate court fight, it would be unconscionable for McConnell not to hear his witness.
