Every Senate Republican except for Mitt Romney now owns every single damaging revelation about President Trump reported in the memoir of former national security adviser John Bolton.
Those revelations should stick to the GOP senators like Velcro. They have covered for Trump, ignored his instability and indecency, excused his lies and ignorance, and willfully pretended his corruptions don’t exist. And they had every chance to examine much of this, especially the corruption, from Bolton while he was under pain of perjury. Instead, they cowered, told Bolton to stay away, and made a mockery of their oaths to try an impeachment trial in (anything approaching) an unbiased fashion.
They owed it to their constituents to hear Bolton under oath back then, both to see if what he said held dispositive relevance to any grounds for impeachment and also because the public deserved context for the charges against the president. Well, now the public knows what it was the Senate Republicans tried to hide, and it’s not pretty. Worse, rather than being the honest men who elicited the information from Bolton, they look like the pro-Nixon diehards who went down with the Watergate ship in 1974.
The GOP’s choice was simple: Hear from the highest-ranking official who was a direct witness to some of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, or instead promote the fiction that if the House didn’t call a witness, the witness’s testimony would be irrelevant or even invalid. Of course, the opposite is true: A trial that forbids testimony from relevant witnesses is invalid. Worse, those who conduct such a trial are grossly derelict in their duties.
In this case, nobody can seriously doubt the veracity of Bolton’s numerous damaging claims about Trump. First, Bolton may be accused of many things, but he’s a noted straight shooter, sometimes to his own detriment. Second, it is obvious that much of his memoir is backed by copious, contemporaneous notes. Third, if it were fiction, the administration would not have gone to such great lengths to restrain its publication on the grounds that it is classified. A government doesn’t classify that which isn’t true in the first place.
Bolton alleges that Trump engaged in a pattern and practice of behavior similar to that which earned his impeachment, namely misusing the foreign affairs powers of his office, against the public interest, for his own electoral benefit. If senators had subpoenaed Bolton, they could have cross-examined these claims. Instead, they are responsible for keeping the public in the dark for a crucial extra four months and with no formal chance at the elucidation that cross-examination could bring.
In American politics, it is almost axiomatic that the stench of cover-up adheres to those who provide the cover.
That axiom is no hoax.
