Yep, John Bolton is testifying

On Wednesday afternoon, the House decided that it was time to find out where John Bolton truly stood when it came to Donald Trump’s impeachment, so it formally asked him to come in and testify on November 7th. Bolton’s response, relayed through his attorney to the media, just told us all we need to know about how Bolton is planning to play this.

John Bolton’s attorney announced on Wednesday night that Bolton will not show up and testify “voluntarily,” but that Bolton will “accept” any subpoena that just might happen to get dropped in his lap. Translation: Bolton definitely wants to testify against Trump, he just wants it to look like he’s being forced to testify.

If you want to know for sure why Bolton wants it to go down this way, you’ll have to go ask him yourself; we’re not going getting close enough to that warmongering maniac to ask him. But his actions up to this point seemingly haven’t been too difficult to parse. His longtime sidekick Charles Kupperman, with whom Bolton shares an attorney, has gone into court seeking guidance about whether to testify. From the start we’ve interpreted this as Bolton’s way of getting the courts to order Kupperman – and thus order Bolton by default as well – to testify.

Maybe John Bolton is trying to keep up his far-right-wing street cred by creating the appearance that he’s only helping out the Democrats by testifying against his fellow right-winger Donald Trump because he legally had no choice. Whatever Bolton’s reason, the wording of his attorney’s response makes it clear that he’s going to testify; he just wants to be subpoenaed first.