John Bolton keeps dropping breadcrumbs of criminality and the Republicans don't seem to care. Too bad Bolton won't just go in front of a camera or just show up at Congress and offer to testify on the spot. Instead he is choosing to wait until his book comes out in the hopes that he can trade the future of our demoracy for some money.

It's the Republican way, after all.

The New York Times is reporting that two months before Trump asked Zelensky to "do us a favor, though" he was pressuring Bolton to conduct his own "pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials."

Oh.

Reportedly, Trump had an Oval Office meeting with Mick Mulvaney, Rudy Giuliani and Pat Cipollone in attendance. During this meeting, Bolton alleges that Trump told him to call Zelensky and pressure him to meet with Rudy Giuliani. Bolton says he never made the call - probably because he realized it was a bananas plan, aka "a drug deal."

This is the first time that anyone with firsthand knowledge has not only linked Rudy to a demand, but brought Mulvaney AND THE WHITE HOUSE LAWYER into the room. So one of Trump's lawyers, who has stated probably hundreds of times, that Trump did nothing wrong and exerted no pressure, WAS IN THE ROOM.

This is the exact kind of information the Democrats want to present to the Senate. And this is the exact kind of information the Republicans are pretending does not exist. One on hand, they say they don't have enough evidence from the House. But, when offered to have more evidence presented, they decline.

Donald Trump denies the allegations. Someone in the White House wrote this tweet:

“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. That meeting never happened.”

Giuliani also denied it, saying: “It is absolutely, categorically untrue." Except then he expanded on his denial which turns out to be a non-denial:

I just asked RUDY if BOLTON made up the mtg:

“I think he’s making some of it up. He’s sure making up — I wouldn’t call it making it up, but he’s acting like a real scumbag by never telling me that he objected once, & then saying I was a time bomb, or a firecracker or something."

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 31, 2020

Will this make a difference to the Republicans in the Senate? Nope. Not a chance.