From Bloomberg a little while ago: Trump Will Invoke Executive Privilege to Block Bolton Testimony President Donald Trump said the White House plans to invoke executive privilege to prevent former National Security Adviser John Bolton from testifying in the Senate impeachment trial expected to begin next week. “I think you have to for the sake of the office,” Trump said in an interview Friday with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham when asked whether he would take steps to stop the possible testimony. “You can’t be in the White House as president -- future, I’m talking about future, many future presidents -- and have a security adviser, anybody having to do with security, and legal, and other things” testify, Trump said.
Most transparent in history, drain the swamp! Honestly, who's gonna enforce it anyway? People lie to congress all the time
Either way, that's a pretty significant development in this thing. I wonder if he planned this with the Administration in advance, ie before he even said he would testify if subpoenaed he knew Trump would use Executive Privilege. This has to be a huge disappointment for the Dems. I'm sure they were just giddy at the prospect of having him under oath.
Yes and No. They know that Trump is going to be acquitted, and they want to be able to say that it was just because either Trump or the Senate would not allow witnesses so that works for them. They have their whining routine all worked out in advance. Same thing with the possibility of an early dismissal. They say they dont want it, but most of them do. Again, it will give them a possibility of crying foul rather than just admitting they have lost. Also- last but not least- this whole thing has gone on too long. Pelosi did not want to do it, then got rammed into doing it by her own party, and then said she would be okay with it as long as it was over by the end of October. And when that slipped, by the end of December, but definitely not okay with having a trial right before or during the primaries. Well, here we/they are. Right before or in the middle of the primaries when four or five of the candidates- sanders, klobo, warren, booker, etc- would be taken off the trail. As I said. they pretend that the dont want this thing to be dismissed but plenty of them do. Wow, it would only take a hiccup to push this into late February right when the fiercest campaigning before Super Tuesday occurs in March. Not pretty if you are a candidate, unless you are Joe who does not need to be in the Senate trial. What a frigging mess. Once again, they have out-clowned themselves.
I don't think they ever had any hope he'd testify unless under subpoena in the Senate & Mich took care of that.
And the reason he is not/was not called to testify before House or could not still be called to testify before the House is what?
Just imagine a justice system that allows a defendant from stopping witnesses from testifying against them