House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are fighting to force impeachment witnesses who defied congressional subpoenas related to Ukraine to testify, but so far, no court cases against the four key figures exist.
Pelosi made the misleading claim in an ABC interview Sunday in response to comments about Republican critics saying House Democrats could’ve done more to exhaust their alternatives when Trump officials refused to show up to testify at the behest of the president, including bringing those cases to court and played a clip by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine saying that “the House chose not to go to court to enforce its subpoenas, so there are gaps in what the House has sent us.”
“That isn’t even true,” Pelosi said. “We are in court on the witnesses. It could take a very long time.”
But no Ukraine controversy figures, including none of the four impeachment trial witnesses requested by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former Mulvaney senior adviser Robert Blair, Office of Management and Budget official Mike Duffey, and former national security adviser John Bolton — have been brought to court by Democrats to enforce the subpoenas they ignored, and Bolton was never subpoenaed at all. President Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani also refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Democrats said they didn’t need his testimony to make their case and moved ahead with impeachment without it.
The only two high-profile appeals court cases being pursued by Democrats are related to grand jury material from special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year Trump-Russia investigation and the desire to push former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify about events within Mueller’s report such as allegations of obstruction of justice. But both cases began months before the Ukraine impeachment proceedings, although Democrats now claim the secret Mueller info or McGahn’s testimony could help them make their Ukraine impeachment case.
One of the two articles of impeachment approved by the Democrats relates to Trump’s alleged obstruction of Congress. Thus far, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not granted any Democratic witness requests. Pelosi has been holding onto the articles of impeachment for weeks but is expected to send them over to the Senate soon.
When George Stephanopoulos pointed out Democrats backed off on calling Bolton, the California Democrat doubled down.
“Well, but, on the other witnesses, we have been in court,” Pelosi said. “And we haven’t eliminated the possibility of a subpoena going forward on Bolton, but he has said in this two-week period — as another piece of progress that we made — that he would respond to a subpoena from the United States Senate.”
But House Democrats have not turned to the courts to compel any Ukraine-specific witnesses to appear, something GOP impeachment witness Jonathan Turley and many others have repeatedly pointed out. Democrats went as far as to withdraw the subpoena they’d issued against Bolton deputy Charles Kupperman when he asked the courts to decide whether he should comply with the congressional subpoena or with Trump’s instruction not to appear, and Democrats and the DOJ successfully convinced the judge to dismiss the case as moot.
The two articles of impeachment passed by the House charging the president with abusing his power by soliciting Ukraine’s help to interfere in the 2020 election and with obstructing Congress include language alleging this is a pattern of behavior by the president, claiming his actions toward Ukraine are “consistent” with those toward Russia.
