House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) won’t say whether he’ll issue a subpoean to former national security advisor John Bolton to have Bolton testify in front of a House panel, even though he pressed the Senate to force Bolton to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
The Democrats had played with subpoenaing Bolton even during the Senate trial, suggesting, repeatedly, that Bolton could be forced to testify in the House and, if his testimony yielded any new and interesting information, that could bolster the Democrats’ argument for further witnesses in the Senate. That opportunity, though, has now come and gone, and a draft of Bolton’s tell-all book about his time in the White House, which includes a passage about Trump’s discussions with Ukrainian leaders, was not enough to convince Republicans to open the floodgates.
Democrats have also threatened to continue to hold hearings in the House, seeking a possible second attempt at impeaching the president.
But according to Schiff, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, there are no concrete plans to have Bolton as a guest of the House Intelligence Committee any time soon.
‘I don’t want to comment to this point on what our plans may or may not be with respect to John Bolton,” Schiff said. “But I will say this: whether it’s before – in testimony before the House or it’s in his book or it’s in one form or another, the truth will continue to come out.”
Schiff also accused the White House of engaging in a coverup — an effort he says has “failed,” despite the fact that the president is likely to be acquitted on all charges come Wednesday.
“That shows you the lengths to which the President’s lawyers are going to cover this up,” he said, referencing a series of emails released Friday showing communications between Trump and Ukrainian officials on the subject of foreign aid. “But they’re going to fail. Indeed, they’ve failed already.”
The impeachment trial will likely end this week; the Senate voted on Friday to outline the rules for a final vote, setting the trial’s conclusion for Wednesday.
For Schiff, though, an acquittal vote will simply mean a return to further, different investigations into the White House and the president. The Ukrainian issue may be exhausted, but Democrats have more than 85 separate targets on their “hit list,” per an Axios report from 2018 when the investigations were just kicking off, and most have yet to kick off, let alone conclude.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), for example, is still waiting on Federal courts to decide whether she can subpoena President Trump’s financial records from before he was president, and whether she can force Deutche Bank to turn over information about the Trump Corporation’s dealings with Russian financiers before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s tax returns are also still on the table, as is whether he’s earning profits from his hotel chain while in office in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.
House Democrats may want to spend time on Bolton, but there are also at least 64 outstanding subpoenas for Trump Administration officials, and members of the House Democratic caucus have suggested at least two dozen additional investigations since the House impeachment hearings began.