Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a frequent opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. Follow her on Twitter @fridaghitis. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. Read more opinion on CNN.
President Donald Trump and his backers seemed all set to wrap up the impeachment trial by this week.
Then came the blast that threatened to bring Trump’s defense tumbling down, when The New York Times revealed that former national security adviser John Bolton, in his upcoming book, contradicted the core of Trump’s arguments.
Now the outcome of this trial, the one that was supposed to have a preordained outcome, looks less certain.
Until now, the President was right to feel comforted. After all, Republican senators, who took a sworn oath “to do impartial justice,” were instead obediently following directions from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had vowed “total coordination with the White House counsel.” They looked set to reject Democrats’ pleas to hear witnesses, and instead planned to move promptly to acquit.
As a result, the overwhelming evidence against the President meant nothing. Trump’s defense team has barely bothered to put up much of a case. One of Trump’s most devoted supporters, Rep. Matt Gaetz, complained the defense’s presentation looked like an “eighth-grade book report.”
And yet, there was that one phrase destined for immortality from the defense. Trump’s defense attorney Mike Purpura declared, “Not a single witness testified that the President himself said there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance (to Ukraine).”
Now Bolton’s book has fired a rocket into that claim.
Sunday night, the New York Times reported, and CNN later confirmed, that in his unpublished manuscript Bolton says Trump told him the $391 million in aid to Ukraine – although already approved by Congress and mandated by law to be delivered – would remain frozen until Ukraine agreed to help with investigations into Democrats, including Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The allegations of wrongdoing by the Bidens, which Republicans continue to push, have no basis in fact. Some of the investigations Trump asks for from Ukraine do, however, have a basis in the Kremlin. As Trump’s former top Russia expert Fiona Hill testified, conspiracy theories being promoted by Trump are a “fictional narrative” fabricated by Moscow.
Nonetheless, Trump and his defenders have tried to claim that his freezing of aid for Ukraine and his demands for investigations are unconnected. Now Bolton, who has said he is willing to testify, looks prepared to directly contradict the President.
The question is whether enough Republicans will show the courage to demand Bolton be allowed to testify. Or will they accept the White House’s defense, an insult to their – and our – intelligence, that the President cannot be convicted because there are no witnesses – even as it is they who are blocking the witnesses?
Already Sen. Mitt Romney has said he wants to hear from Bolton. Sen. Susan Collins issued a soft porridge of a statement, saying the new reporting, “strengthens the case for witnesses and has prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues.”
Trump, unsurprisingly, claimst Bolton is not telling the truth.
But if Bolton does testify, whom will people believe?
Trump already has a track record of thousands of lies. Bolton’s views are controversial, but he’s not known as particularly prone to lying.
Suddenly, the situation has taken a very interesting turn. Sure, the odds still overwhelmingly favor acquittal. But trials, not unlike wars, can be unpredictable. Just as the United States has gone to war against much weaker enemies, mistakenly expecting an easy stride to victory, this trial could suddenly move in a wholly unexpected direction.
Consider that polls show half the country or more wants the Senate to convict and remove Trump from office. A Pew poll found a majority of 51% want him gone; 63% think Trump has acted illegally, and 70% think he has acted unethically.
As we know, it’s Republican voters senators worry about. But even a large majority of Republicans, according to a Reuters poll, say the trial should hear witnesses. And among Trump’s core Fox News-watching supporters, Bolton, who is a former Fox commentator and Trump supporter, is a respected figure.
Fox viewers may remember “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy back in September saying, “If the President said (to Ukrainian President Zelensky) ‘I will give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,’ that is really off-the-rails wrong.” And then there’s Fox’s legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, who recently broke sharply with Fox orthodoxy to essentially declare Trump should be removed from office, writing in an op-ed last week that the evidence against Trump is “ample and uncontradicted.”
The standards have apparently changed since then. For now, Fox News is doing everything in its power to support Trump’s case, relegating some of the most powerful parts of the impeachment trial to a small silent box in the corner of the screen, while his most vociferous defenders simultaneously disparage the case against him loudly during prime-time programming.
Despite this, it is not inconceivable that Trump’s impeachment could take a wholly unexpected turn with Bolton’s bombshell.
The odds that Trump will be removed from office remain exceedingly small, but they are not non-existent.
The President was feeling so secure that he had already moved to the vengeance part of the plan. In an appalling tweet over the weekend, he said Adam Schiff, the lead Democratic impeachment manager, “has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our country!” – a statement that, however much his defenders try to explain away, sounds like an incitement to violence.
Schiff took the President’s remarks that way. Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said it was “ridiculous” for Schiff to claim that Trump was threatening him.
Now Trump is having to shift gears back to the trial. He is not out of danger. Maybe the trial will still end this week. But if it ends without hearing from Bolton, Americans will know the President prevented them from hearing the evidence and Republican senators were accomplices in the effort. If that happens, it will have an impact in the November election and on who controls the Senate next year.