As the House’s impeachment inquiry enters a public phase this week, investigators have a problem. Potentially crucial witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security advisor John Bolton, have declined to testify. Mulvaney, who remains director of the Office of Management and Budget, failed to show up for a scheduled deposition Friday despite having been served with a subpoena.
Testimony from these witnesses may not be indispensable, given the evidence three House committees have obtained from other witnesses about pressure placed on Ukraine to help President Trump politically in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in coveted U.S. aid. House Democrats say they’ll soldier on even if these top Trump confidants refuse to cooperate.
But if the country wants to learn what Trump himself said and did — and we do, badly — the testimony of his closest aides would be, at the very least, highly enlightening. Although the president and his lawyers are working hard to impede the investigation by keeping those aides from cooperating, here’s hoping they will not succeed.
It’s obvious from Trump’s now-infamous July 25 telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Trump’s domestic political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and prop up a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was responsible for interfering with the 2016 election. Trump raised those issues and asked for “a favor” after telling Zelensky that “we do a lot for Ukraine.”
It’s equally clear from the depositions of a parade of witnesses — some of whom will soon testify in public — that the Trump-Zelensky call must be placed in a larger context. William Taylor, the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, described for the committee an “irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking with respect to Ukraine,” one that ran through Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s ubiquitous personal lawyer and television apologist. Giuliani has urged Ukraine to investigate Biden, whose son Hunter served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
According to multiple witnesses, this “irregular” channel led Ukrainian officials to believe that they would not get the aid until Zelensky publicly committed to the two investigations Trump alluded to in the July 25 call — the “quid pro quo” Trump has repeatedly denied. In amended testimony, Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, said he delivered that message personally to a top Ukrainian official in September.
The secondhand nature of much of the evidence, however, has allowed Trump’s defenders to float the idea that people around the president pushed a quid pro quo without the president’s knowledge or consent. Testimony by Bolton and Mulvaney could shed important light on that question.
On Friday, Charles Cooper — who represents both Bolton and Charles Kupperman, Bolton’s deputy at the National Security Council who also has declined to testify — said in a letter to the House’s chief lawyer that Bolton “was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far.”
But Cooper added that Bolton and Kupperman wanted a “definitive judgment from the judicial branch determining their constitutional duty in the face of conflicting demands of the legislative and executive branches.” The administration claims that these witnesses were such close advisors to the president, it would be unconstitutional for Congress to compel them to testify. Such a judgment could come in a lawsuit Kupperman filed in federal court after he was subpoenaed. But the subpoena has been withdrawn and the House has asked the judge to dismiss Kupperman’s lawsuit.
Obviously, the courts could bring much-needed clarity to the situation. But this administration, which has stonewalled the inquiry, will no doubt seek to delay any resolution of the legal questions until well into 2020 or beyond. That’s why Bolton, Mulvaney and Kupperman should testify voluntarily about this vital matter without waiting for an adjudication of a claim of testimonial privilege. Other current and former administration officials have defied the White House’s obstructionist stance for the good of the country. They should too.
— Los Angeles Times
