Nonwitnesses for Impeachment Democrats now don’t care to hear from Bolton or Kupperman.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonwitnesses-for-impeachment-11573417743?cx_testId=30&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s
House Democrats open the public phase of their impeachment hearings this week, but the process isn’t gaining credibility with their decision to limit witnesses.
On Saturday Republicans offered their list of preferred witnesses to Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who was given veto power in a partisan resolution vote last month. The GOP list includes the still-unidentified whistleblower; Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden ; Nellie Ohr, who worked for opposition research outfit Fusion GPS; and Trump Administration officials who dealt with Ukraine on foreign aid.
Mr. Schiff said he’d consider the list though he all but ruled out calling anyone who might shed light on corruption in Ukraine or Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 election. Yet it’s impossible to understand Mr. Trump’s concern about Joe and Hunter Biden and corruption in Ukraine without that context.
Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have given up their desire to interview former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton and his former deputy Charles Kupperman. Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Kupperman to much media fanfare last month but then abandoned the subpoena last week, and they said they wouldn’t call Mr. Bolton though the lawyer for both men says they’d gladly testify.
The White House has barred both from testifying on grounds of national-security and presidential-adviser immunity, which Democrats claim is illegitimate. But suddenly Democrats don’t want to fight in court to prove their case, perhaps because they think they might lose but also because they want to rush to an impeachment vote within weeks. As Charles Cooper, the lawyer for Messrs. Kupperman and Bolton, put it in a Nov. 8 letter to the House general counsel: “If the House chooses not to pursue through subpoena the testimony of Dr. Kupperman and Ambassador Bolton, let the record be clear: that is the House’s decision.”
The good news is that Judge Richard Leon, who was assigned to the Kupperman case, refused the Democratic plea to drop the matter and will hold a hearing by phone on Monday. The chances he might rule increased when Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, asked Friday to join the Kupperman case after he was subpoenaed by the House. If the House now withdraws his subpoena as well, it will show that the House hearings are a pro forma exercise in prosecuting a predetermined narrative.
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