Welcome to the Resistance

John Bolton, welcome to the Resistance?

Testimony in the impeachment inquiry has indicated Bolton was alarmed by shifts in Trump’s foreign policy. But will he turn on the president?

By NAHAL TOOSI

Washington has grown accustomed to the unexpected, the unusual and even the bizarre during the presidency of Donald Trump.

But is it ready for John Bolton, hero of the “Resistance”?

It’s a question increasingly on the minds of lawmakers, U.S. diplomats and possibly Trump himself as the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry forges ahead. A key revelation so far: Bolton, while serving as Trump’s national security adviser, raised alarms about the politically questionable role informal actors were playing in shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine.

“Am I going to have to like Bolton now?” Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer frequently critical of the Trump administration, tweeted earlier this month. “This plot twist, where John Bolton turns out to be good, really strains the credibility of this entire season,” joked Vox.com writer Ian Millhiser.

In remarks he’s made since leaving the administration in September, Bolton has blasted Trump’s outreach to North Korea as “doomed to failure” and ripped his negotiations with the Taliban as “disrespectful” to the families of 9/11 victims.

He hasn’t publicly described what others have depicted as a fierce internal battle among aides and associates of Trump over the thrust of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, however. Privately, some observers suspect whatever Bolton ultimately says could damage the president.

On Tuesday, William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, offered the most detailed account yet portraying Bolton — a famously hawkish conservative known for his bureaucratic knife-fighting skills and loathing of liberals — as growing irate at the possibility that Ukraine policy was being warped by Trump’s political ambitions.

In testimony before House lawmakers, Taylor said he was told by Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman, both National Security Council officials at the time, that Bolton “abruptly ended” a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials. He did so after Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, “connected” a potential Trump meeting with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with “investigations.”

As he ended the meeting, according to Taylor, Bolton told Hill and Vindman that “they should have nothing to do with domestic politics.” Bolton told Hill, who has also since left the NSC, that she should “brief the lawyers.” Bolton also opposed setting up a call between Zelensky and Trump “out of concern that it ‘would be a disaster,’” Taylor testified.

Taylor’s statements aligned what Hill told lawmakers earlier. He confirmed a particularly colorful line from Hill: that “Bolton referred to this as a ‘drug deal’ after the July 10 meeting.”

Hill also told lawmakers that Bolton described Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, who also was helping shape Ukraine policy, as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Bolton was not on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky that is at the core of the impeachment probe. According to a detailed readout of that call, which Trump has defended as “perfect,” Trump repeatedly pressured the new Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden.

Trump pushed Bolton out of the national security adviser role in September, after months of rising tensions between the two, describing him as “tough” but “not smart.” He also complained, “John wasn’t in line with what we were doing” — remarks that at the time were interpreted to refer to Bolton’s widely reported disagreements with the president over Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.

Bolton’s firing came at almost exactly the same time that the Trump administration agreed to unfreeze some $400 million in military aid to Ukraine — money that Taylor came to believe was being held up to pressure Kiev into pursuing Trump’s desired investigations.

There remain many unanswered questions about Bolton’s role in the Ukraine drama, including whether he ever addressed his concerns directly with Trump or took other steps to derail actions he thought inappropriate.

Bolton, via a spokeswoman, declined to comment for this story. There is widespread anticipation, however, that lawmakers will demand his testimony.

The White House has refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry led by Hill Democrats, and has even sought to bar former officials like Bolton from testifying. If he does end up providing his version of events, what he says could affect not only the inquiry but also history’s view of him.

Until now, Bolton’s professional legacy has been shaped heavily by a few things: his time spent as George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations; his vehement disdain for multilateralism; his pugnacious support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq; and his time at Trump’s side, during which he angled for military strikes on Iran.

But Bolton is working on a hotly anticipated book in which he’s expected to provide a first-hand account of his tumultuous 17-month tenure working for Trump. His agents on the project, Javelin’s Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn, secured major advances for previous tell-alls by former FBI director James Comey and ex-White House aide Cliff Sims.

Bolton’s allies caution Trump’s liberal detractors not to get their hopes up that Bolton has changed at his core. Plus, they warn, what’s been leaked out of the closed-door impeachment hearings so far isn’t the full picture.

“This idea of John Bolton being a hero on the left is such nonsense,” said Fred Fleitz, a longtime associate who briefly worked as Bolton’s chief of staff at the NSC. “John Bolton is a Reagan conservative, and he’s going to remain so after this process.”

For now, plenty of Democrats who love the idea of aides turning on Trump are unwilling to rope Bolton into the so-called Resistance. It is possible, they argue, to be a purveyor of terrible policy ideas while at the same time balking at illegal, or at least impeachable, acts.

And the longer Bolton takes to speak out, some add, the more the skepticism of his motives will rise.

“There is an early mover advantage for witnesses to come forward on presidential misconduct, not to mention a constitutional duty to do so,” said Jeffrey Prescott, a former senior official in the Obama administration. “Soon, the question for those around Trump, including those who have left the administration, is ‘If you saw something, why didn’t you say something?’”

John Gans, author of “White House Warriors,” a book about the NSC, noted that Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, has long held a view that the president has expansive power on foreign policy. Republicans seeking to shut down the inquiry will be relying in part on arguments he and others have made, Gans said.

“The question for all those who see Bolton as the key to bringing Trump down is whether he will abdicate or put aside his long-held views on the presidency,” Gans said.

Taylor’s testimony Tuesday also raised questions about the actions of two other Trump aides: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Tim Morrison, a top NSC official.

According to Taylor, he spoke privately in late August with Bolton about his concern that Trump was withholding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, though this was before he realized the aid freeze may have been to pressure Zelensky into pursuing the investigations.

On Bolton’s advice, Taylor sent a first-person cable to Pompeo, sharing his worries that withholding the aid would hurt Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia.

“I told the secretary that I could not and would not defend such a policy,” Taylor said. “Although I received no specific response, I heard that soon thereafter, the secretary carried the cable with him to a meeting at the White House focused on security assistance for Ukraine.”

The testimony deepens the mystery surrounding Pompeo’s actions throughout the affair. He has acknowledged being on the July 25 call, but he’s been silent on what he knew, when he knew it and how he could have permitted Giuliani and others to play such a major role in Ukraine policy.

The State Department did not reply to a request for comment.

Morrison is an arms control expert who took over from Hill as a senior NSC official dealing with Europe and Russia. Taylor’s testimony relies on what he said Morrison relayed to him about several key events.

Those events include the July 25 call — which Taylor was not on, and which Morrison said “could have been better.”

It also included Morrison’s account of a conversation between Sondland and a Ukrainian representative in Warsaw, in which Sondland said the military assistance wasn’t coming unless Ukraine committed to pursuing the investigations Trump wanted.

Morrison didn’t reply to a request for comment. He’s long been associated with Bolton, but he has stayed at the NSC even after Bolton’s departure.

House Democrats have asked Morrison to testify, but it’s not yet known whether he will do so, given the White House refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.