I like and respect Bolton. He'll only do a lot of damage if it turns out that the President is lying. As Andrew McCarthy has pointed out, it is not necessary to the case for acquittal to claim there was no attempt to leverage the aid to obtain Ukrainian assurances on corruption. That's legit, IMO - and the fact still remain that the aid was released within the time limit required by Congress without preconditions.
Lots of the GOP Senators have known and worked with Bolton for a very long time. They are caught in a seeming dilemma - the NYT report suggests Bolton was told by Trump of the quid pro quo and Trump denies it. So who to believe?
I don't see how the scenario of forcing Senators to choose -- publicly -- between Bolton and Trump isn't bad for Trump. You've got Kelly coming out and saying he'd believe Bolton. And even though there are a lot of people who'd believe Trump, some won't, and it would just give the opposition another angle on which to attack him. Because even if it isn't that important a point, you've now added "lied to the American people during impeachment" -- even if it wasn't under oath -- to the list of things for which Trump will be attacked.
I think it also is bad for Senators caught in the middle to force them to choose, and they
will be pressured heavily to say publicly who they believed. If they say "I think Bolton lied", then they're going to have to explain why they thought he lied. And if they say "I think Trump lied", then defending a vote to acquit is going to be that much more difficult.
It would have been far better to admit (if it's the truth) that the idea of a quid pro quo was strongly considered and ultimately rejected and the aid released.
I agree...but that point doesn't really do much good now because it's water over the dam.
But at this point, it superficially looks like either Bolton or Trump is lying. And that's what places the GOP Senators in a conundrum. Who to believe? This isn't Blasey-Ford, some unknown dragged out of the woods by partisan Dems alleging a spurious charge. This is Bolton, a man of integrity and solid conservative credentials, respected by most of the GOP Senators.
The best way out of that conundrum is to say that
it doesn't matter who we believe because the aid ultimately went out without any conditions. That's really the only way out of the "heads I win/tails you lose" position of having to state publicly who they believed and why. This may be one of those things where Mitch gives a couple of the RINO's up for reelection a "pass" to vote for witnesses, but be outvoted.