The first REAL sparks just blew in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Republican heavyweight, self-described “conservative to the core” political appointee and former head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) just said that John Bolton went so far over the line in harrassing Christian Westermann that he has seen nothing like it in his entire career.
Ford said that if this was just normal rough-and-tussle, blustery-faced competition between bureaucrats, Ford would not be testifying today. But he argued that Bolton, a senior official, went five or six levels into a bureaucracy and harrassed an official who reported to others. Ford called Bolton a “serial abuser.”
Watch out. The currents of this nomination may have just changed.
— Steve Clemons
