During the first part of the dismissal trial of Donald Trump, on January 21, the leader of the democratic prosecutors, Adam Schiff (California), chairman of the intelligence committee, had warned the republican senators who opposed by repeated votes on any request to hear witnesses or additional documents so far blocked by the White House. "The truth will come out. The question is whether it will be released in time ", he had said. "The truth will eventually come out, new elements will appear, we can already see it, witnesses will speak, do you want to see this truth? " he repeated the next day.
However, after three days of indictments, the block of republican elected officials, firmly led by Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), remained unmoved. So much so that the acquittal of the president promised by the arithmetic of the Senate seemed to be possible at the end of the second week of the trial, just before the traditional State of the Union speech scheduled for February 4.
It was without counting the revelation by the New York Times, Sunday evening January 26, excerpts from the book of a key witness whom the Republican senators had refused to hear as the Democrats wanted: the president’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who was sacked in September 2019.
Bargaining
According to the New York daily, the former ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of George W. Bush says in a book, to be published in March, that Donald Trump has tied before him the freezing of crucial military aid for the To the opening of investigations into his political opponents, starting with former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the favorites in the Democratic presidential nomination contest in November, whose son Hunter has served on the board of directors of a gas company in the country. John Bolton also claims that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper disapproved of the move and warned Donald Trump against the actions of his envoy to Ukraine, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
It was this bargaining that led to the impeachment of the President for abuse of power, one of two articles defended by the Democrats in the Senate. The second, the obstruction to Congress, refers to the scorched earth tactic opposed by the White House to the whims of investigations by the House of Representatives. Members of the National Security Council, including former Ukrainian case manager Fiona Hill, explained at their hearing in November 2019 that John Bolton had strongly opposed these negotiations with Ukraine before he left of the White House.
