Next up in vindictive prosecution of Trump's "enemies"

 My feelings exactly.

Fascists on the march

 

Trump's FBI raided John Bolton

 

The official reason has something to do with classified information.  The real reason is noted in the posting above.

Cockroaches don't just go away

 

Trump's disregard for records processing

“We had something approximating a process,” this person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation. “He’s a total pack rat, keeps all sorts of stuff.” Trump could be cavalier about material, crumpling up his papers or tearing them into pieces and leaving them on the floor, the former aide said.

  YahooYahoo

The epitome of entitlement - tossing things to the floor for someone else to dispose or take care of. Such a disgusting prick.

Trump also saved sentimental items, advisers said. He would ask to keep items that were fun to show off: classified surveillance photos or letters from foreign leaders, like France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, they said.

Who doesn't find it fun to show off classified surveillance photos?

Bolton, in an interview, mentioned a letter that Trump had gotten from the North Korean leader and said that “John Kelly took it from him and we put it back in the right place.” (Kelly confirmed the account). “We gave Trump a copy of it back. He had a habit of taking stuff and you’d never see it again.”

Excuse me, but neither John Kelly nor John Bolton have any excuse for not reporting these things publicly or to oversight agencies at the time they were occurring.

At the height of the 2020 campaign, Trump was also keenly interested in all of the records relating to the government’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. He sent out a tweet ordering all such documents immediately declassified.

But when media organizations tried to gain access to the records, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows argued in court that the records were not instantly declassified. After he left office, Trump was unaware that the records hadn’t been declassified and angrily swore at Meadows, according to a Trump adviser.

“What the f—, Mark?” Trump screamed on the phone, according to the adviser who heard the exchange.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Move over Rosemary Woods

White House logs that were given to the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol have a gap of more than seven hours in former President Trump’s phone records on Jan. 6, 2021, documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News reportedly show.

The news outlets reported that the gap in Trump’s communications stretches from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on the day of the attack, contradicting reports on several phone calls Trump had during that time period.

[...]

Phone conversations that reportedly occurred with Trump during the gap of 7 hours and 37 minutes gap include conversations with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), whom Trump called in order to get in touch with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), the Post noted.

[...]

A spokesperson for Trump stated the records were not controlled by Trump and the former president believed all his communications were logged that day, according to the news outlets.

"I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term,” Trump reportedly said in a statement Monday, referring to a disposable phone.

  The Hill

LOLOL!

...but hey, say what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 3/30:

John Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.

  The Guardian

I don't know who believed Trump anyway. He insists he knows everything, except when he doesn't know anything. What a joke.

Also, John Bolton didn't need to tell him about the use of burner phones.  The man has been tangled up with the Russian mob for decades.  He understands burner phones.

UPDATE 4/1:

An official review found that the White House phone records for Jan. 6, 2021, are complete, CNN reported Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter, following reports earlier in the week that the call logs given to the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol had a gap of more than seven hours that day.

The source told CNN that no pages were found to be missing from the six-page White House phone logs from Jan. 6.

The outlet also reported, citing multiple sources familiar, that the Jan. 6 phone records appear typical based on former President Trump’s habits. Trump often opted to have staff use landlines or cellphones to place calls for him while he was in the Oval Office, which would not be recorded in the White House switchboard records, sources told CNN.

  The Hill

I'm gonna need some clarification here.

Let's check out that CNN report.

In the seven hours during which White House records show no phone calls to or from then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, among the calls that are conspicuously absent is one Trump made to then-Vice President Mike Pence that morning from the Oval Office.

While the call is not specifically noted in the presidential diary or the presidential call log, its existence has been corroborated by multiple sources who were with Trump and Pence that day, including former aides who testified before the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack. And it's not the only call Trump is known to have made in that timeframe that is not reflected in the records.

[...]

According to multiple sources familiar with Trump's phone behavior and the White House switchboard records, the January 6 log reflects Trump's typical phone habits. He mainly placed calls through the switchboard when he was in the residence but rarely used it when he was in the Oval Office. The fact the log does not show calls on January 6, 2021, from the Oval Office is not unusual, said the sources, because Trump typically had staff either place calls directly for him on landlines or cell phones. Those calls would not be noted on the switchboard log.

  CNN

So maybe technically "complete", but it only makes it more of a problem if that's the way he normally did business. Who knows what sleeze, corruption and crime he was committing via phone calls outside the official record.

UPDATE 4/2:  So maybe not even technically complete...

Untitled

Just thought you could use a laugh.

"This should never to happen again!!!"

Projection is a way of life for some.

BTW...

A federal judge has rejected the White House’s last-ditch efforts to stop the publication of a new book from John Bolton, saying the former adviser had “gambled with the national security of the United States” but an injunction was not an “appropriate remedy”.

The judge overseeing a justice department lawsuit against Mr Bolton said in a ruling on Saturday that President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser had exposed his country to harm and himself to civil and potentially criminal liability by pushing ahead with his memoir, The Room Where It Happened.

[...]

“In taking it upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities, Bolton may indeed have caused the country irreparable harm. But in the internet age, even a handful of copies in circulation could irrevocably destroy confidentiality,” the judge said. “With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo.”

[...]

But Royce Lamberth concluded that the government had “failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm”.

“While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy,” the judge said.

  Financial Times

It's not a loss if you don't recognize it?

A White House statement said: “The Government intends to hold Bolton to the further requirements of his agreements and to ensure that he receives no profits from his shameful decision to place his desire for money and attention ahead of his obligations to protect national security. “

Charles Cooper, a lawyer for Mr Bolton, welcome[d] the court’s decision to deny the injunction. “We respectfully take issue, however, with the Court’s preliminary conclusion at this early stage of the case that Ambassador Bolton did not comply fully with his contractual pre-publication obligation to the Government, and the case will now proceed to development of the full record on that issue. The full story of these events has yet to be told — but it will be.”

[...]

Simon & Schuster said on Saturday: “We are grateful that the court has vindicated the strong First Amendment protections against censorship and prior restraint of publication. We are very pleased that the public will now have the opportunity to read Ambassador Bolton’s account of his time as national security adviser.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More on Bolton's book

Vanity Fair has seen unredacted pages from the book and it’s clear why the White House tried to keep Trump’s words secret: they are deeply embarrassing and illustrate Trump’s naked politicization of America’s foreign policy.

According to an unredacted passage shown to Vanity Fair by a source, Trump’s ask [of Xi Jinping] is even more crudely shocking when you read Trump’s specific language. “Make sure I win,” Trump allegedly told Xi during a dinner at the G20 conference in Osaka, Japan last summer. “I will probably win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms.… Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win.”

[...]

Bolton writes that Trump told Xi on a phone call ahead of their G20 meeting: “I miss you,” and then said, “this is totally up to you, but the most popular thing I’ve ever been involved with is making a deal with China.… Making a deal with China would be a very popular thing for me.’”

Another passage shows Trump’s racist views on immigration. Bolton describes how Trump derailed a White House meeting about Iran strategy by bringing up a right wing conspiracy that Black South Africans were killing white South African farmers and stealing their land. According to Bolton, Trump blurted out that he wanted to grant the white South Africans “asylum and citizenship.”

  Vanity Fair

UPDATE:

Still triggered

Trump's history of hiring "losers" he should have fired sooner is quite extensive.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What a dope

Him tweeting this is why he won't win the case in court.  Not that he actually cares.  

UPDATE:

UPDATE  6pm - still at it:

Bolton book bits

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

[...]

Bolton’s 592-page memoir, obtained by The Washington Post, is the most substantive, critical dissection of the president from an administration insider so far, coming from a conservative who has worked in Republican administrations for decades and is a longtime contributor to Fox News. It portrays Trump as an “erratic” and “stunningly uninformed” commander in chief, and lays out a long series of jarring and troubling encounters between the president, his top advisers and foreign leaders.

  WaPo

And where was Mr. Bolton during the impeachment hearings? That's right. Holding out against testifying.

Bolton recounts numerous private conversations Trump had with other leaders that revealed the limits of his knowledge. He recalls Trump asking Kelly if Finland is part of Russia. In a meeting with then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018, a British official referred to the United Kingdom as a “nuclear power,” and Trump interjects: “Oh, are you a nuclear power?” Bolton adds that he could tell the question about Britain, which has long maintained a nuclear arsenal, “was not intended as a joke.”

[...]

During a NATO summit in the summer of 2018, Bolton recounts a moment when Trump had decided to inform U.S. allies that the United States was going to withdraw from NATO if allies didn’t substantially increase defense spending by January.

“We will walk out, and not defend those who have not [paid],” read a message Trump dictated to Bolton. [The DOJ] filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block [Bolton's book's] publication by alleging that it contains classified material. Bolton’s attorney has said the book does not contain classified material and that it underwent an arduous review process.

[...]

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that the tome still contained classified information.

[...]

The request for electoral assistance from Xi is one of many instances described by Bolton in which Trump seeks favors or approval from authoritarian leaders. Many of those same leaders were also happy to take advantage of the U.S. president and attempt to manipulate him, Bolton writes, often through simplistic appeals to his various obsessions.

[...]

In May 2018, Bolton says, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan handed Trump a memo claiming innocence for a Turkish firm under investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for violating Iranian sanctions.

“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton writes.

Bolton says he was so alarmed by Trump’s determination to do favors for autocrats such as Erdogan and Xi that he scheduled a meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to discuss the president’s behavior. Bolton writes that Barr agreed he also was worried about the appearances created by Trump’s behavior.

And Bolton believed that?

Bolton cites personal conversations with Trump confirming a “quid pro quo” on Ukraine that Trump had long denied, including an August meeting in which Trump allegedly made the bargain explicit.“He said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all Russia-investigation material related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over,” Bolton writes.

[...]

[H]e writes that he found Trump’s decision to hold up military assistance to pressure newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “deeply disturbing,” and that he tried to work internally to counter it, reporting concerns to Barr and the White House Counsel’s Office.

Asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Shows how clueless Bolton was/is.

In the memoir, Bolton describes the president's advisers as frequently flummoxed by Trump and said a variety of officials — including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton himself — all considered resigning in disgust or frustration.

Yes, we can see how disgusted Mike Pompeo has been.

Even some of the president’s most loyal advisers hold a dim view of him in private, he writes.

[...]

“He second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government,” Bolton writes, always looking to “personal instinct” and opportunities for “reality TV showmanship.”

Tell us something we can't see for ourselves.

After Trump completed a phone call with South Korea’s president ahead of the 2018 Singapore summit with North Korea, Pompeo and Bolton shared their disdain for the president’s handling of the conversation, he writes. Pompeo, having listened in on the call from the Middle East, told Bolton he was “having a cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia.” Bolton shared his similar disappointment with the call, describing it as a “near death experience.”

[...]

Bolton attributes a litany of shocking statements to the president. Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and that the South American nation was “really part of the United States.” Bolton says Trump kept confusing the current and former presidents of Afghanistan, while asking Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to help him strike a deal with Iran. And Trump told Xi that Americans were clamoring for him to change constitutional rules to serve more than two terms, according to the book.

Well, some of them are.

He also describes a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey where Trump says journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags,” Trump said, according to Bolton's account.

Bolton describes in depth the feuding and backbiting among Trump’s cadre of advisers, as well as referring dismissively to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s efforts to get involved in domestic and foreign policy issues. Almost every adviser — including Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former defense secretary Jim Mattis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley — comes under the scalpel. By contrast, Bolton seems to hold himself in high regard and admits few mistakes of his own.

LOL. What a surprise.

For Trump, Bolton writes, one singular goal loomed above all: securing a second term.

“I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes.

Bolton says Trump said he wanted out of Afghanistan during his second year instead of his third year so he could blame his predecessor for the war. Screaming about the border wall in a meeting with top advisers in 2018, Trump described why illegal immigration had to go down and the wall had to go up, according to Bolton’s book.

“I got elected on this issue and now I’m going to get unelected,” Trump said, startling those around him.

[...]

Though Trump approved of a proposal from Bolton to publicly declare the United States recognized [Venezuela's Juan] Guaidó rather than [elected president Nicolas] Maduro, within 30 hours Trump was already worrying that Guaidó appeared weak — a “kid” compared to “tough” Maduro — and considering changing course. “You couldn’t make this up,” Bolton writes.

In describing his White House experience on Russia-related issues, Bolton presents a picture of a president who is impulsive, churlish and consistently opposed to U.S. policy designed to discourage Russian aggression and to sanction Putin’s malign behavior.

[...]

He describes in detail the events leading up to the widely panned Helsinki summit in July 2018, when Trump sided with Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies over Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

[...]

Soon after he arrived at the White House, Bolton said Kelly gave him a warning. “You can’t imagine how desperate I am to get out of here,” Kelly said, according to Bolton’s book. “This is a bad place to work, as you will find out.”

Throughout the book, he describes Trump and top advisers repeatedly slashing each other, lying to each other and maneuvering to gain advantage.

At one point, Bolton says he learned that Kushner was going to be calling the finance minister of Turkey because he was also Erdogan’s son-in-law.

“I briefed Pompeo and Mnuchin on this new ‘son-in-law channel’ and they both exploded. Pompeo was furious, Bolton writes, “because this was one more example of Kushner’s doing international negotiations he shouldn’t have been doing (along with the never quite ready Middle East peace plan).”

For extended periods of time, Trump kept telling different advisers they were in charge of border policy, according to Bolton’s book. One day in 2018 in the Oval Office, Kelly purportedly learned that Kushner was calling Mexican authorities when he barged into the Oval Office and said so.

“Why is Jared calling Mexicans?” Kelly asked loudly, according to the book. “Because I asked him to. How else are we going to stop the caravans?” Trump responded.

In November 2018, Trump came under fire for writing an unfettered defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, littered with exclamation points, over the killing of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. But according to Bolton’s book, the main goal of the missive was to take away attention from a story about Ivanka Trump using her personal email for government business.

“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said, according to Bolton’s book. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”

[...]

Describing the conflict in Afghanistan, Trump said: “This was done by a stupid person named George Bush.”

[...]

When Bolton recounts the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore, the first summit of U.S. and North Korean leaders in history, Bolton castigates Trump’s diplomatic efforts, saying the president cared little for the details of the denuclearization effort and saw it merely as a “an exercise in publicity.”

He describes it extensively — including what Kim and his advisers say, and what Trump and his advisers say in return, giving a fly-on-the-wall account of a historic event.

“Trump told . . . me he was prepared to sign a substance-free communique, have his press conference to declare victory and then get out of town,” Bolton wrote.

Which is exactly what we witnessed.

In the months following the summit, Bolton described Trump’s inordinate interest in Pompeo delivering an autographed copy of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on CD to Kim during Pompeo’s follow-on visit to North Korea. Trump had used the term “Little Rocket Man” to criticize the North Korean leader but subsequently tried to convince Kim that it was a term of affection.

“Trump didn’t seem to realize Pompeo hadn’t actually seen Kim Jong Un [during the trip], asking if Pompeo had handed” the CD, wrote Bolton. “Pompeo had not. Getting this CD to Kim remained a high priority for several months.”

I'm sure Sir Elton is flattered.

"Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear." - Mark 4:9

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I had been wondering why Trump was suddenly coming down hard on China over coronavirus and assumed it was just because he was trying to deflect criticism, but now I'm thinking there was more to it than that.  He knew what Bolton's book would say about him being China's bitch.

Bolton's book

Don't buy it.  Don't support the dirtbag. Check it out from your library if you want to read it. Or just wait until it gets reviewed and written about.

President Donald Trump repeatedly endangered national security — and committed a series of potentially impeachable offenses — to boost his reelection prospects, former national security adviser John Bolton argues in a forthcoming White House memoir.

Bolton writes that the House should have broadened its impeachment inquiry to other areas of his foreign policy, contending that he can document — and identify witnesses to — "Ukraine-like transgressions ... across the full range of his foreign policy," according to a description by Simon & Schuster released Friday.

  Politico

And yet he wouldn't testify during the impeachment. Dirtbag.

Per the publisher, Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” not only covers “chaos in the White House,” but also “assessments of major players, the president’s inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike.”

[...]

Despite Bolton's refusal to testify, Simon & Schuster said he was “astonished” by Trump’s actions, and viewed him as a “president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation" — language that mirrors a central claim of the Democratic case.

Bolton plans to write that he was “hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision” during his tenure as national security adviser, from April 2018 through September 2019, “that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”

[...]

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff declined to comment, but others involved in the impeachment inquiry were livid that Bolton delayed revealing potentially pertinent evidence until months after it would have bolstered their case.

"At the time the country needed him most, and history will reflect, he chose to sell books," said Rep. Mike Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. "It wasn't a question in his mind of whether or not he should talk about it. It's whether or not he should profit from talking about it. Not exactly 'Profiles in Courage.'"

Indeed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

John Whore Bolton should testify

President Trump has reportedly personally called for the publication of John Bolton's upcoming book to be blocked, telling staff he thinks his former national security adviser is "a traitor," according to The Washington Post.

  The Hill

Trump's definition of traitor is anyone who says something negative about him.

People familiar with the issue told the Post that Trump has directly been involved in the process and believes everything he said to Bolton about national security is considered classified and should not be published. The White House already sought to block publication of Bolton's book last month, writing in a letter that it contained "significant amounts of classified information." However, the letter also stated that the White House would work with Bolton to ensure his "ability to tell his story in a manner that protects U.S. national security."

[...]

Trump told his lawyers Bolton's new book "The Room Where it Happened," should not be published before the November election.

Hmmmm...why would that be?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

John Bolton is still a whore

Will the House try subpoenaing him again?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's just a huge catfight now

Click here

Click here

And........................

Bill Barr!

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

  ABC

Don't you think he should be telling that to His Lardship and not to the world on ABC? I smell trouble coming.

When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”

Better ask His Lardship about what his job is.

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody ... whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president,” Barr said.

We'll see about that.  Barr also said, "It's time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.  He's going to get called to the oval office, isn't he?

"I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”

You undercut yourself, Billy Boy.

The interview is here.

And he probably can't understand why Bill Barr wouldn't be happy to be congratulated for it in a Trump tweet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 2/14:

Reminding Bill Barr who's boss.

UPDATE:  Matthew Gertz was right:

When he is acquitted

With Senate Republicans on track to acquit Donald Trump on Wednesday, Washington is bracing for what an unshackled Trump does next. Republicans briefed on Trump’s thinking believe that the president is out for revenge against his adversaries. “It’s payback time,” a prominent Republican told me last week. “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day,” another source said. Names that came up in my conversations with Republicans included Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Mitt Romney, and John Bolton. “Trump’s playbook is simple: go after people who crossed him during impeachment.”

[...]

The campaign against Bolton has already begun. On January 23, the White House sent a cease and desist letter to Bolton’s lawyer demanding that Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, not release the book in March without removal of certain information. Trump intends to ratchet up the pressure, and some Republicans close to the White House fear how far Trump will take things after he’s gotten off for a second time (Trump famously made his July 25 call to Volodymyr Zelensky the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress.)

  Vanity Fair

So maybe they should be thinking about trying to convince some Senators to vote to remove Trump from office.

“Trump has been calling people and telling them to go after Bolton,” a source briefed on the private conversations said. The source added that Trump wants Bolton to be criminally investigated.

Using the power of his office to persecute his "enemies".  I believe that's what impeachment is for.  And also how dictators work.

A person familiar with Trump’s thinking said Trump believes Bolton might have mishandled classified information.

No he doesn't. That's the excuse he'll use to get Barr to open an investigation.

According to a former official, the White House is planning to leak White House emails from Bolton that purportedly allege Bolton abused his position at the National Security Council. The official said that West Wing officials have discussed releasing emails “showing [Bolton] was doing pay-to-play,” the official said.

Well, if anybody should know about pay-to-play, it's Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whiney Ass and his henchman

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. Ky.), aided by White House liaisons, exercised a behind-the-scenes campaign in the chamber to keep his members from panicking and breaking en masse from Mr. Trump. Mr. McConnell’s office even advised the president’s legal team throughout the process on which arguments were important to be made on the floor to resonate with certain undecided senators.

  WSJ

There's some real desire to get to the truth and administer justice there.

Mr. Trump stayed largely on the sidelines, heeding advice he had received directly from Mr. McConnell to give fence-sitting Republican senators—who were wary both of crossing the president and appearing browbeaten by him—the space to make their own decisions.

That's a first. He must have been pretty nervous.

But he engaged in some political saber-rattling with tweets about the need for a speedy trial resolution and criticism of Mr. Bolton, which was amplified by conservative allies in the media.

[...]

Trump recalled that Mr. Bolton once told him he wanted to be national security adviser because he worried he couldn’t win the Senate confirmation required for many other senior jobs.

“I should have seen that as a red flag,” Mr. Trump said, according to an aide in the room. “But instead, I did the guy a favor, took him at his word that this was a good fit, and this is what he did to me?”

Mob boss.

In a private meeting at lunchtime Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) made an impassioned speech to his colleagues about the need to hear from Mr. Bolton.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) floated the possibility of bringing in Mr. Bolton and a witness who would appeal to Mr. Trump.

Mr. McConnell’s message to senators then was to stay calm and be patient. He had framed the handling of the trial as a bigger threat to the party’s Senate majority than to the president.

[...]

White House officials spoke out against Mr. Bolton, as did Trump allies in the Senate. Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), who considers Mr. Bolton a close friend, patrolled the Senate hallways gripping a printout of talking points matching those pushed by the White House.

Some friend.

On Tuesday afternoon, all 53 Republican senators gathered in an ornate room near the Capitol Rotunda. Mr. McConnell was clutching a card—apparently a tally of Republican votes on the witness question—marked with “yeses,” “noes” and “maybes.”

He told them the vote count wasn’t where it needed to be, according to people familiar with the meeting, and struck an ominous tone, saying the future of the country and the Constitution were at stake.

That part's true. But the plan to save them was a Democratic party one.

Mike Lee of Utah, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, all lawyers, made the legal case against witnesses.

How do you make a legal case against witnesses?

McConnell kept up his cajoling on Wednesday, repeating his argument that the trial wasn’t just about the president, but about preserving the GOP Senate majority, and the sooner it ended the better.

In fact, McConnell doesn't give a shit about Trump, any more than Trump gives a shit about him. They use each other for their own ends.

McConnell met that morning with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who was one of the handful viewed as potentially in favor of calling witnesses. “I’m not going to be discussing the witness situation right now,” she said afterward.

Which was the same as saying she was voting against.

Toomey, who had earlier floated the idea of calling witnesses for both sides, shifted position, telling reporters he didn’t believe that new witnesses could change the outcome of the trial.

Those are the kinds of statements that get actual witnesses in jury trials eliminated during voir dire. I don't need to hear witnesses, I already know how I'm voting.

Ms. Collins said Thursday evening that, as expected, she would vote for witnesses. But later Mr. Alexander, while terming Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine inappropriate, said he saw no need for witnesses.

On Friday around lunchtime, Ms. Murkowski said she, too, saw no need for witnesses, effectively scotching the prospect. Senators on Friday afternoon narrowly voted 51-49 not to have witnesses, the first impeachment trial in U.S. history to exclude them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

That's exactly what it is.  Seeing anything else is willfull distortion.

Irony is still dead

Ask your boss.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Everyone was in the loop

More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.

[...]

In a statement after this article was published, Mr. Trump denied the discussion that Mr. Bolton described.

“I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of N.Y.C., to meet with President Zelensky,” Mr. Trump said. “That meeting never happened.”

  NYT

Yeah, Bolton didn't set it up.

[Giuliani] was adamant that Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Mulvaney were never involved in meetings related to Ukraine.

“It is absolutely, categorically untrue,” he said.

I think if we're going to compare truthfulness between Bolton on the one hand and Giuliani and Trump on the other, we can be fairly certain what did happen.

But John Bolton is a whore for not coming forward and testifying when asked at the House hearings, instead withholding the information to enrich himself with a book.

Mr. Trump also repeatedly made national security decisions contrary to American interests, Mr. Bolton wrote, describing a pervasive sense of alarm among top advisers about the president’s choices. Mr. Bolton expressed concern to others in the administration that the president was effectively granting favors to autocratic leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China.

And here's another instance of the Stalin syndrome infecting the White House:

After pushing out Ms. Yovanovitch, Mr. Giuliani turned his attention to other American diplomats responsible for Ukraine policy. During the Oval Office conversation, he also mentioned a State Department official with the last name of Kent, whom Mr. Bolton wrote he did not know. Mr. Giuliani said he was hostile to Mr. Trump and sympathetic to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has long been a target of the far right.

[...]

Mr. Bolton left the Oval Office after 10 minutes and returned to his office, he wrote. Shortly after, two aides came into his office, saying Mr. Trump had sent them out of a separate meeting on trade to ask about Mr. Kent, Mr. Bolton wrote.

They're at the stage of firing, smearing and destroying people's careers. How much longer until they're at the stage of jailing people who speak out against them?  Already they've got 50 Senators afraid to.

I don't think we can count on Justice Roberts for any support of the rule of law.

And I hope Robert Mueller is having trouble sleeping.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.