“I don’t want to comment to this point on what our plans may or may not be with respect to John Bolton, but I will say this: whether it’s before — in testimony before the House — or it’s in his (forthcoming) book or it’s in one form or another, the truth will come out (and) will continue to come out,” Schiff said in an interview with CBS when asked if the chamber would subpoena the former Trump administration official.
The California Democrat, who’s serving as lead impeachment manager in the trial, also called the President’s lawyers’ arguments “disingenuous” and said “they waited until midnight so that senators voting on whether to compel these documents would not have that information.”
“That shows you the lengths to which the President’s lawyers are going to cover this up,” he said, adding: “but they’re going to fail. Indeed, they’ve failed already.”
When asked about Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s statement last week that she would not vote in favor of the Senate subpoenaing witnesses and documents because the impeachment process was partisan from the beginning and the articles were rushed and flawed, Schiff turned the blame back on the senators, saying they are not “mere spectators” and that they could have had a fair trial if they decided to include witnesses and documents.
“It is within their power to make it a fair trial with four votes, with four courageous senators saying ‘no we’re going to demand a fair trial no matter what this president may say,'” he said, referring to the four Republican votes Democrats needed to include witnesses in the trial. “There would have been a fair trial. There would have been witnesses and testimony.”
“First of all, if we continue with litigation, as we are doing at this moment with Don McGahn, and we subpoenaed him nine months ago and we’re still nowhere near a final resolution, it would probably be one to two years before we would have had a decision on John Bolton,” he said. “That means the President would have been able to cheat in the next election with impunity because they could have simply delayed and played out the clock.