John Bolton is now at the center of the Senate impeachment trial.
The New York Times reported on an unpublished manuscript of the former national security adviser’s book, to be released in March, in which Bolton writes President Trump told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in aid to Ukraine until officials helped with investigations into Democrats, namely Joe and Hunter Biden.
However, none of this seems to faze Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican.
On the Washington Examiner’s Hashing it Out podcast, Cramer said that he doesn’t need to hear Bolton testify.
“I don’t think it’s very much new information,” Cramer said. “I really don’t.”
He continued. “Even if it’s all true, exactly in the worst-case scenario as John Bolton may put it, it doesn’t really change the facts much, if at all. For me, I also don’t think I’d really learn anything new from him, because we already know that the president was concerned about Biden’s role, when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, and a possible corrupt activity in Ukraine. So, if it’s further proof of it, so what? We already know about it.”
Even as some of his Republican colleagues, such as Sens. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, feel the pressure to vote in favor of allowing witnesses to testify, Cramer said he feels no pressure, even after the Bolton revelation.
Cramer also said that dragging out the Senate impeachment trial will damage and divide the country further than it already has. However, on a political level, he added that Trump’s impeachment will hurt Democrats more in the long run.
“People understandably are very protective of their power that they have in our exceptional system of an electoral republic,” Cramer said. “When the power of the people is substituted for the power of the partisan House of Representatives, I think they take that rather seriously, and they ought to.”
