The repellent Adam Schiff strode up to the podium on the Senate floor and addressed his audience. “Mr. Philbin said the House is not ready to present its case. That’s not something you’ve heard from any of the managers. We are ready. The House calls John Bolton. The House calls John Bolton. The House calls Mick Mulvaney. Let’s get this trial started, shall we? We are ready to present our case. We are ready to call our witnesses. The question is…Will you let us?”

In November, the Republicans were ready to call their witnesses. Among them were the whistleblower, Hunter Biden, Alexandra Chalupa, and Nellie Ohr. When they asked Adam Schiff, ‘Will you let us?’ he said no. And Schiff was running the show.

Speaking to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Rep. John Ratcliffe said, “Adam Schiff says things he knows that aren’t true with supreme conviction. Democrats think that makes him effective, we think that makes him dangerous.”

Dan Bongino tells his listeners that “Schiff is now making the case to the Senate, after he impeached the President, that if he can’t get John Bolton as a witness, then the case is incomplete. He led the impeachment against the President of the United States and is now acknowledging afterwards that he doesn’t have the information. He’s also claiming, you heard it yourself, that they tried to get Bolton.”

Actually, they didn’t.

Bongino reminds him of the facts. He puts up a clip from a November 8 article entitled “Bolton attorney ‘dismayed’ over lack of subpoena” written by Rachel Frazin at The Hill. 

“You just saw Adam Schiff in the Senate claiming they needed John Bolton as a witness and the case isn’t complete without him. Yet Bolton never got a subpoena from the House side to testify? How is that?” Frazin writes:

House Democrats had scheduled Bolton to appear on Thursday, but said they wouldn’t issue him a subpoena after he declined to appear.

“Mr. Bolton would take us to court if we subpoenaed him,” a House Intelligence Committee official said in a statement.

“We would welcome John Bolton’s deposition and he did not appear as he was requested today,” the official said. “We regret Mr. Bolton’s decision not to appear voluntarily, but we have no interest in allowing the Administration to play rope-a-dope with us in the courts for months.”

Bongino’s Analysis:

You [Schiff] wanted Bolton, but the minute executive privilege, which you know is going to be claimed by any President, the minute you realized you had a court fight on your hands, you didn’t want Bolton. But you impeached the President anyway.

The Democrats, if they “needed” Bolton had the option to subpoena him and then duke it out in court and see if they could get him or not. Well, why didn’t they do that? Because the Democrats were in a rush. This is a political impeachment. There’s no allegation of a crime…They were in a rush and they didn’t want to wait.

And now, they’re coming back on the Senate side and saying, ‘Hey, our case is incomplete. We need Bolton.’ You idiots decided not to subpoena Bolton. Not us.

The Democrats are alleging a bank robbery. And they can’t find anybody anywhere to say a bank has been robbed.

They’re alleging there was a pressure campaign against the Ukrainians. ‘You give us information on Biden, or we won’t give you this military aid.’ No Ukrainians have come forward to say this happened. What is Bolton going to say?

‘Well Bolton was told that the President wanted information on election interference in 2016 that the Ukrainians may have been involved in.’

Good! What’s the problem? So the President wanted information on interference in the election and never pressured the Ukrainians. ‘Well, the President told Bolton the two were tied.’

Thought crimes are not a crime. He [Trump] would have to actually pressure the Ukrainians for your case to actually be true.

‘No, no, he thought about doing it. He thought about it.’

The Democrats corruption and collusion is real. If he thought about this and said something to Bolton, none of this is a crime. None of this is even illicit or unethical.

Dershowitz hit this issue hard during his Senate presentation on Monday night. He said:

If a president, any president, were to have done what The Times reported about the content of the Bolton manuscript, that would not constitute an impeachable offense. Let me repeat: Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense.

The Constitution makes it clear that you cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct simply by using words like ‘quid pro quo’ and ‘personal benefit’. The framers wouldn’t have promiscuously used a term like abuse of power to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment.

It is precisely the kind of vague, open-ended and subjective term that the framers feared and rejected.

Bongino then discusses the fact that the manuscript was in the hands of the National Security Council for prepublication review. He laughs because this is so ridiculous. Who was on the NSC he asks. “Oh yeah, the whistleblower and the two staffers who left to go work for Adam Schiff.” I posted on this topic on Monday night here. Impeachment inquiry witness Alexander (please call me Lt. Col.) Vindman and his twin brother, Yegnevy, are also on the NSC. Even worse, a source told Breitbart that Yegnevy, who works as an ethics attorney, “clears publications for NSC officials.” Too, too much.

The New York Times article doesn’t specify the date in August when Trump allegedly spoke to Bolton. They say only that the President had just returned from a vacation at his golf resort in New Jersey. That would make it sometime around August 18th.

Bongino points out that this would have been about two weeks before the Ukrainians even learned about the delay in the aid. “How the hell do you engage in a pressure campaign when the Ukrainians don’t even know you’re putting pressure on them?…I don’t even believe Bolton. But, even if Bolton’s manuscript is correct, that he had this conversation with Trump, Trump never passed that pressure onto Ukraine. They didn’t even know about the delay in the aid. Did you notice the New York Times left that out for a reason? Did you think that was a mistake?”

Finally, Adam Schiff, et al., keep railing that President Trump put Ukrainian troops at risk. This is another lie. “That is not the aid that was held up. The javelin missiles that were the subject of the transcript were not held up at all…Even his House manager, Rep. Val Demings, is confused about this.”

Bongino plays a clip of Demings speaking to George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” and he corrects her. (At 30:40 in the podcast below) Stephanopoulos tells Demings, “One of the points that the President’s team made is that those javelin missiles weren’t actually even suspended, that aid wasn’t held up. It was a different tranche of aid.” Demings looked completely bewildered.

Facts:

The aid was delivered before the deadline.

The javelin missiles that were discussed on the Trump/Zelensky call were not held up at all.

There is no crime and there is no victim.

The Democratic corruption is real. Immutable fact.

Most Americans aren’t paying attention.

The Bongino Rule

Whenever an anti-Trump “bombshell” is reported, wait 24 to 72 hours and the story will be largely discredited.