Rep. Nadler says he’s ‘not interested’ in John Bolton’s testimony

Rep. Adam Schiff, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, said he’ll be meeting with other Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, about whether to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about the explosive claims he makes about President Trump in his White House memoir.

“We haven’t had a chance to read the book,” Schiff (D-Calif.) said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday.

“When we do, and we expect we will within the next 24 to 48 hours, like the rest of the country, we will look at what allegations like those involving Turkey and other countries, particularly involving China, need to be fleshed out and exposed to the light of day. And then we’ll make our decisions,” Schiff said, referring to Bolton’s book,” “The Room Where It Happened,” that is scheduled to hit bookstores Tuesday.

“But, you know, we do need, I think, to expose the length and breadth of this president’s depravity and how much it is endangering the country. So those facts are going to need to come out and we are discussing with the speaker and my fellow chairs just how to do that,” he said.

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, doesn’t appear to be in sync with Schiff.

“No, we’re not interested in Bolton’s testimony,” the New York Democrat said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
After being pressed by host Jake Tapper, Nadler acknowledged that “we may, but we’ll see about that.”

Among the allegations in Bolton’s memoir, Bolton writes that Trump sought Chinese President Xi Jinping’s help in winning a second term by buying more products from American farmers during the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in June 2019.

Bolton, a former White House national security adviser, also claimed in reported excerpts before Tuesday’s scheduled publication that he informed Attorney General William Barr about Trump’s apparent desire to thwart investigations into the Chinese telecom company ZTE and Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank.

Bolton wrote that the Democrats committed “impeachment malpractice” by failing to broaden their investigation into Trump beyond his call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Well, the fact is the president could have been impeached on other grounds, too, such as obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation,” Nadler said. “We chose to try to keep it simple, but Bolton, who has as we now know evidence that he could have offered but refused to offer is certainly no one to talk.”

Bolton did not testify in the Democratic-majority House’s impeachment investigation and was not called to appear in the GOP-led Senate trial.

Nadler was asked if Bolton’s new allegations are impeachable or whether he has closed the door on making another attempt.

“I think the president has done a lot of impeachable things including what Bolton is talking about. But we have an election coming up, and we know the Republicans in the Senate will not entertain impeachment in any event. So that would be at this point, a waste of time and effort,” he said.

Trump was impeached in the House in December, but acquitted in a Senate trial in January.