The next big House impeachment witnesses against Donald Trump
Now that Fiona Hill and David Holmes have testified, the next names listed on the House impeachment testimony schedule are… no one. There are currently no names on the publicly available impeachment schedule. Yet the House is still fiercely fighting battles over evidence and testimony, suggesting that the hearings may be far from over. So what’s next?
There are a few not-so-subtle hints in plain view, though the meaning of those hints is open to interpretation. For instance, John Bolton says he’ll testify if a judge rules that Don McGahn must testify. The House recently asked a judge to speed up that ruling, and it’s now set to happen on Monday. But we don’t know for sure if the House is doing this because it wants McGahn, or Bolton, or both. Bolton would be a compelling Ukraine scandal witness. McGahn would take things in an entirely new direction.
Don McGahn appears to have fully cooperated with Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation into Donald Trump. Mueller famously did nothing with his findings, but that’s another story. House Democrats could bring in McGahn to publicly testify about all the obstruction crimes that Trump committed against the likes of Mueller and James Comey. While the average American may not grasp how the law works in these kinds of crimes, McGahn’s testimony would paint Trump as being maniacally out of control.
There are also other directions House Democrats can go. They’re still fighting tooth and nail to get Donald Trump’s tax returns, and they could get their hands on those returns any day now, if the Supreme Court announces it’s not taking up the case. The House would then perhaps have financial experts testify about Trump’s taxes. There are also other Mueller cooperators like Rick Gates who would probably be willing to testify, and could help expose how criminally out of control Trump was during the 2016 election.
The question continues to be whether the House wants to focus on as many of Donald Trump’s various crimes as possible in order to paint him as a career criminal, or try to keep the focus squarely on the easily understood Ukraine scandal and coverup. What we do know is that they’re not going to tip their hand. The few House Democrats who have publicly addressed the question of upcoming witnesses have all been coy in their responses.
