statement of ambassador taylor, one can easily see why the white house does not want further evidence to come before the congress. i found it remarkable, i have to say, that the republican members of our three committees, including ranking members on oversight committees, took a position effectively of endorsing the white house obstruction, that the president in an impeachment inquiry or in any oversight inquiry to misconduct can simply instruct senior people not to testify. that is deeply damaging to this institution and any congress s ability to do oversight, let alone in the important context of an impeachment proceeding. nonetheless, we go forward, now armed with additional evidence of obstruction, as well as additional inferences that can be drawn that this witness s testimony would further incriminate the president of the united states. and i m happy to respond to a couple of questions.
national security aid to john bolton, filed a lawsuit with the district court here in d.c. on friday night asking the judicial branch in a sense to weigh in on whether his obligation is to honor a subpoena from congress or orders from the executive branch not to testify. and as of this morning, that lawsuit had not even been lieu m the court, kupperman will not be testifying this morning. he s important to democrats because he ll represent the first witness who was actually on that phone call, the phone call that started this whole impeachment inquiry. and while democrats will get another crack at another witness who was on that call on thursday, the big take-away with kupperman, is i think you can look at him as a proxy for whether or not john bolton, the former national security adviser, will appear. the two men worked together for quite a long time. they share the same attorney. and it s possible that this court fight over whether or not kupperman will testify could influence the ne
form of an investigation into one of his opponents. i can understand why the president doesn t want these witnesses to come forward. what i find harder to understand is why the republican members of this body in this house don t want these witnesses to come forward. where is their duty to this institution? where is their duty to the constitution? where is their respect for the rule of law? this will not be our last president. and as i underscored today, they ought to understand the imperative of a congress to get information from the executive. without it, we cannot do our jobs. thank you. we ve been listening to house intelligence chairman adam schiff, react to the nonappearance of the big witness for the day, which was charles kupperman. let s go back to hans nichols, nbc news white house correspondent and i m told we
assistance that they were counting on. until now at least things have moved fairly quickly. you have significant testimony from mull presidential administration officials. but according to the new york times, this could be the first of many road blocks. what we re seeing here. how are the committees going to secure cooperation from more high ranking officials as we move forward. we are going to count on people to follow lawful subpoenas. for the public s sake and most people in the public get this, if you re innocent, you show up and cooperate. it you re the white house and you re innocent, you allow people to come forward and help their country understand what s going on. if you don t have anything to help the president, you re going to be obstructive. what i don t understand, i understand why the white house would order these witnesses not to show up. i can t understand why my colleagues who want to make sure that congress as an independent branch of government has an
we will not allow the white house to delay our investigation. any acts of obstruction, any effort to prevent the congress and therefore the american people from learning more about the president s misconduct will merely build a public case for obstruction of congress by this president. and let s keep in mind what we have learned in two short weeks, thanks to the courageous testimony of many state department, defense department and other national security officials. we have learned that a president of the united states abused his power to coerce an ally that is fending off russian occupation of its territory in order to get political dirt on an opponent. conditioned a white house meeting, and as mick mulvaney acknowledged, conditioned military support to fight off an adversary of the united states. conditioned those things on getting political help in the