House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said he would not call in former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about his claims about President Trump in his new book.
Emphasizing that Bolton should have testified during the House impeachment investigation last year if he was serious about telling the truth to Congress, the New York Democrat told CNN on Sunday that another round of impeachment this year would be a dead end.
“We’re not interested in Bolton’s testimony,” Nadler told State of the Union.
In his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton accused Nadler and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of “impeachment malpractice” by not focusing on Trump’s behavior beyond the Ukraine scandal. Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House last year and was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate in February.
Schiff, who was the lead impeachment manager during the Senate trial, suggested last week, amid leaks from the book, that House Democrats may investigate Bolton’s claims but said he would need to speak with other Democratic leaders first.
Host Jake Tapper pushed Nadler to justify why he would not call Bolton in to testify given the claims made in his book. He noted that Bolton accused Trump of vowing to stop an investigation into Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank, which the office of Geoffrey Berman, the top prosecutor for the Southern District of New York who was fired on Saturday, was investigating and charged in federal court for allegedly transferring up to $20 billion to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
“Bolton says in his book that President Trump promised him he would stop the investigation into the Turkish bank that the Southern District of New York was doing at the time, which you brought up as a potential reason why Geoff Berman might have been fired. It sounds as though Bolton has evidence to back that up. But you don’t want to hear him because what? Because you’re upset that he didn’t voluntarily testify during impeachment?” Tapper asked.
Nadler said he might investigate the matter but ruled out a new impeachment investigation focused on Attorney General William Barr because the election is only months away.
“The fact is that the president could’ve been impeached on other grounds too, such as obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. We chose to try to keep it simple. And Bolton, who has, as we now know, evidence that he could have offered and refused to offer, is certainly no one to talk,” Nadler said.
“I think the president has done a lot of impeachable things, including what Bolton’s talking about,” Nadler later added. “But we have an election coming up. We know the Republicans in the Senate will not entertain an impeachment in any event. So that would be, at this point, be a waste of time and effort.”
