Everyone thinks they know how impeachment will play out - but John Bolton could still change it all

There is a chance that the Democrats may yet get to determine some aspects of proceedings in the Senate – and they want the former White House adviser to testify

Related video: Putin backs Trump over impeachment and calls historic proceedings 'far-fetched' (EPA)

Donald Trump’s vituperative letter to Nancy Pelosi decrying the impeachment proceedings against him ended with the grandiloquent claim of being written “for the purpose of history.”

The man who attacked by his many critics for debasing and corrupting the office of the president wanted to be seen as the custodian of democratic values. “One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it ...So that it can never happen to another president again.”

If making history was not enough, Trump’s Republican supporters in the House, falling over themselves to show their devotion, held him up as a martyr, at the level of divinity.

“When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers. During the sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than Democrats have afforded this president in this process” declared Congressman Barry Loudermilk from Georgia.

Of course, in reality, the president was asked by Jerry Nadler, the Democrat chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to give evidence if he wished. Something which would have allowed his lawyers to question witnesses. But the White House rejected the offer.

The historical fact is that Trump is now only the third US president to be impeached after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. While the House of Representatives debated and voted, he was at a rally railing against the “radical left” Democrats and tweeting in block letters to express his outrage.

Trump now faces a trial before the Senate. Unlike the trial of Jesus before the Jewish religious body of the Sanhedrin as depicted in the Bible, the dice is not loaded against him. On the contrary the leadership of the Republicans controlling the Senate has already announced that they will find him not guilty.

The senators are meant to be impartial jurors. But majority leader Mitch McConnell has stated that the Republicans would act in “total coordination” with Trump’s team during the trial.

Vladimir Putin, who allegedly helped put Trump in the White House, said in Moscow that he was confident that his man will pull through all this, describing the claims made against him as “ far fetched” and “ made up”. The military aid the Trump administration blocked for a time from being sent to Ukraine was for use against Russian-backed separatists.

There is a chance, albeit very slender one, that the Democrats may yet get to determine some aspects of the proceedings if they manage to persuade just four Republicans to go against their party line.

Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat in the Senate, has claimed in an interview with CNN that the four votes may be doable, saying “there are a good number of Republicans who are troubled by what the president did, who want to see all the facts”.

Schumer refused to be drawn on the identities of these senators, but there have been speculation that former presidential candidate Milt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska could be the most likely to break ranks.

Trump faces two articles of impeachment in the 658-page House report accusing him of placing “his personal political interests above our national security, our free and fair elections and our system of checks and balances.”

The first charge is that the president abused his power in trying to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden by withholding military aid. The second alleges that he obstructed Congress by barring the appearance of figures from his administration – that Democrats see as key witnesses – at the impeachment hearings.

There are a number of figures we have yet to hear from whose testimony would be crucial to whether Trump engaged in “high crimes and misdemeanours”. That is why the Democrats have been repeatedly asking for the appearance of the president’s former national security advisor John Bolton, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Robert Blair, Mulvaney’s senior advisor and Michael Duffy, the associate director for national security at the office of Management and Budget.

McConnell has rejected the calling of fresh witnesses. But this is an issue which the Democrats have vowed not to let go. Schumer has protested that holding a trial without witnesses and any new relevant documentation “ would be an aberration” which “ eats away at the foundation of the republic”. He insists “the bottom line is that a trial with no witnesses, a trial with no documents is not a trial. We are going to do everything we can to get those documents and get those witnesses.”

Following the impeachment vote Democrat speaker Pelosi suggested she would hold back the articles of impeachment from the Senate, suggesting that they would be held as leverage to “get a fair hearing.” This, it is argued, will scupper the Republican plan for a quick trial and acquittal of Trump before next November’s presidential election.

“We will make our decision as to when we are going to send it when we see what they are doing on the Senate side. So far, we have not seen anything that looks fair to us” she said.

Mulvaney’s evidence is of great importance given that a statement he made in October acknowledged that a trade-off was demanded with Ukraine with Trump withholding $400 million in military support to the country while demanding a fresh Biden investigation. However, he later denied he had said that.

But the best hope lies with Bolton, no longer in the administration after an acrimonious parting from Trump. He is not bound by White House instructions to its staff not to testify. He is also free to make public statements of what he knows which, if damning enough, may sway more Republicans in the Senate on how they approach the trial.

Bolton is known to have viewed what Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani was doing to Ukraine with concern and distaste. According to testimony to House investigators, Bolton instructed his aide, Fiona Hill, to report Giuliani’s actions to White House lawyers, saying “I am not part of whatever drug deal [Trump aides] are cooking up.”

Bolton has been ready to attack Trump and warn about him, albeit privately. He recently suggested in a speech at a private hedge-fund event that the president could go “full isolationist” and withdraw the US from Nato and other international alliances.

In the same speech to Morgan Stanley executives, NBC reported, Bolton is said to have claimed that Trump’s approach to Turkey and Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been motivated by the financial interests of his family in the country. Bolton has declined to comment on the report./

Republicans in the Senate are not the only numbers Trump has to worry about. An average of six national US polls show 46 per cent are in favour of impeachment and removal of Trump while 49 per cent are not.

These figures are a slight improvement for the president. But they also show that a significantly larger numbers of the public now favour Trump’s removal than was ever the case with his predecessors, Bill Clinton (including during his impeachment) Barack Obama and George W Bush.

Trump’s numbers are similar to those of Richard Nixon when he was going through his impeachment process in 1974. He resigned before a vote had taken place on the articles against him. There is, of course, little chance of Trump resigning. The bitterness, accusations and recriminations which have surrounded this presidency from day one are set to continue.