At the time it sounded off-key; with the benefit of hindsight I read that as a veiled threat. Bolton knew what was coming. If there’s a scoop on the President’s health in coming weeks, I don’t think unrelated.

Bolton said something on CNN following the Putin Summit that caught my attention - “And I will say one other thing. I thought [he] looked very tired up there. I mean, very tired,” he continued. “Not disappointed, tired. And we’ll have to reflect on what that means.”

And on reflection (6) if a copy ever does surface, via whatever source, JG is gonna cop the blame. He’s out doing press now I suspect aiming not just to profile the magazine, but to record his side of the story for the public record as insurance against later exposure.

(4) If JG kept copies or showed the messages to anyone else, let alone actually publishing them, he will spend a very long time reading poorly-translated Solzhenitsyn in a faraway Federal pen;
(5) Hegseth may end up gone anyway, but that will be because he is no good and this story is useful cover.

After removing himself from the chat, JG has nothing other than memory to fall back on, and that will not be enough -
(1) The relevant messages were sent March 15th;
(2) They were set to self-delete after one week (ie March 22nd);
(3) The Atlantic did not publish the story until March 24th;

They can say there were no such messages because at the time the words were spoken, the messages no longer exist, and there is no way to (incontrovertibly) prove they ever did … unless Russia leaked their grabs from Witkoff’s phone, useful kompromat I spose over oh just the entire Principal’s SG.

The outcome here might not be underbus consequences for principals; it might be the threat of supermax prison for Jeffrey Goldberg. If they follow through hard enough we’ll end up wondering if this was in fact an accident.

Do not do this. They’ll bar the doors and watch in delight as Dems flail about trying to escape. Trump will then have a field day. This is a near-perfect distillation of the current situation really. Better to fill the hall with 200 wounded Ukrainians and have them watch in silence.