Democrats Desperate To Go to John

Jan. 29, 2020 (EIRNS)—Having lost ground by making their case against President Donald Trump before the Senate, and having lost more ground by the relatively short and straightforward defense presented by Trump’s lawyers yesterday, the House Democrats are now hanging their hopes of getting extra mileage for their impeachment circus by waiting for former National Security Adviser John Bolton to, hopefully, testify next week. The Senate is expected to vote on Jan. 31 on whether to accept witnesses, including Bolton.

President Trump was not waiting around for that. Earlier today he tweeted about Bolton:

“For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, ‘begged’ me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir,’ takes the job, mistakenly says ‘Libyan Model’ on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?”

A Jan. 23 letter to Bolton’s lawyer from National Security Council Senior Director for Records, Access, and Information Security Management Ellen J. Knight, which was made public by Associated Press today, informs him that the manuscript of Bolton’s kiss-and-tell book that they are reviewing for clearance

“appears to contain significant amounts of classified information. It also appears that some of this classified information is at the TOP SECRET level, which [can] ... ‘reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security’ of the United States if disclosed without authorization.”

Trump’s attorneys concluded their opening arguments on Jan. 28 with a brief, two-hour presentation, hammering at the impeachment as an attempted re-run of the 2016 election. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said:

“What they are asking you to do is to throw out a successful President on the eve of an election, with no basis, and in violation of the Constitution. Why not trust the American people with this decision? Why tear up their ballots?... Overturning the last election and massively interfering with the upcoming one would cause serious and lasting damage to the people of the United States and our great country.... The Senate cannot allow this to happen. It is time for this to end, here and now.”

The Hill reported that “Trump’s attorneys used roughly 11 of the 24 hours allotted to them over three days to present their case,” as compared to the endless droning from the Democrats, who used up nearly every minute allocated to them.

Sen. Lindsey Graham responded to the Democrats’ insistence on calling more witnesses, such as Bolton. “I’ll make a prediction. There will be 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the whistleblower and the DNC staffer at a minimum.”