Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a frequent commentator on Democrats’ current partisan impeachment effort, joined “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the Democrats’ increasingly hard push to ensure that former National Security Advisor John Bolton is called to testify during the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
“Democrats may decide to call Bolton to testify about a possible quid pro quo between Trump and Ukrainian officials regarding an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, even though the articles of impeachment are already published.” The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported earlier this month. “Senior Democrats raised the possibility of subpoenaing Bolton last week, after Bolton himself admitted that, if asked to testify by the Senate, he would comply (though he did not speak on whether he would do the same for a House subpoena, and referenced Republicans specifically).”
“The theory seems to be, according to a plan of action outlined by former advisors of President Barack Obama on the left-leaning site, Crooked, if Bolton is called to testify in the House and provides information critical to the case against the President, that Senate Republicans will have no choice but to allow witnesses at Trump’s Senate impeachment trial,” Zanotti continued.
Last week, The Federalist’s David Marcus argued that even if Bolton testified, his testimony would hardly be the smoking gun that Democrats seem to think it would be. “[W]hat can John Bolton possibly say that would prove Trump’s intent was malicious, and not genuine concern about taxpayer dollars falling into corrupt hands?” Marcus asked rhetorically. “Is he really going to say, ‘The president told me he doesn’t care about corruption, he just wanted to get that pesky Joe Biden and get him good?’ Is there anyone on the face of the planet who thinks that such a conversation could have taken place?”
Hammer joined Wheeler’s OANN program to discuss the same topic. Hammer agreed with Marcus that there is no plausible scenario in which Bolton’s Senate testimony would be a smoking gun.
[Bolton] is clearly not going to provide any kind of smoking gun testimony for the reasons that you just outlined. … [M]y boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, had a good, pretty lengthy column for National Review back in October [on this]. There are two theories as to what happened on the now-infamous July 25th phone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. The first theory Ben calls the “Get Biden Theory”; the second theory is what Ben calls the “Miasma of Corruption Theory.”
So on the first hand, Trump is just trying to politically … get his opponent, Joe Biden. The second hand, he’s actually trying to attach corruption-related strings to the doling out of taxpayer aid. My reading of everything that’s happened so far is that this second theory, the “Miasma of Corruption Theory,” is more likely. Possibly, the “Get Biden Theory” is right, but as you say, the only reason — or the only way that we would ever be shown that is right — is if John Bolton was literally told by Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, “I am doing this to get Joe Biden.” That’s not going to happen.
Hammer also elaborated on Twitter earlier today.
Schiff is gaslighting us. What “evidence” is being hidden?@benshapiro laid it out well at @NRO in Oct. There is the “Get Biden Theory” and the “Miasma of Corruption Theory.” There is one thing and one thing only distinguishing the two: Subjective intent. https://t.co/0wPsbGalBv
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) January 21, 2020
Any purported “evidence” that does not directly speak to that subjective intent — what lawyers call mens rea — is, in actuality, no evidence at all.
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) January 21, 2020
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