coming in and hearing their testimony. from kupperman, someone close to the president, they will not have that now. what does this mean for other witnesses that are a part of the administration? are they going to use this as a reason not to come forward? will it scare them off? well, i mean, look, the only thing i can say is that this has you have to look at this and what it means for bolton. bolton is represented by the same lawyer, this lawyer chuck cooper, who has gone to court and who has done this. and the white house would likely invoke the same privileges against bolton to try to stop him from testifying. bolton, in many ways, is seen as a key witness here because he is someone who is a long-standing republican. he is someone that republicans and conservatives have seen on fox news for many years. he certainly is someone that is different than the long-time career diplomats who have testified in recent days and
court. it s significant because democrats have really wanted to hear from cupperman and he was the acting national security red to the caravaukraines in septem. obviously, john bolton was the national security advisor much of the summer when the discussions were going on. here is the lawyer, cooper, going into federal court and saying, hey, the white house has told us that we cannot talk to the hill. the hill has subpoenaed us and federal judge, you need to figure out whether we can testify. and that s why this lawsuit was filed. and it s interesting because democrats had really been counting on this testimony, and now it will be heading into the courts. lots of speculation the past few days about what bolton may say, and certainly kupperman being as close as he was to bolton, would
cupperman who served as donald trump s deputy national security adviser. house democrats had subpoenaed charles cupperman to testify before the impeachment committees on monday. but in an effort to stop cupperman from doing so, the white house said on friday that the president had invoked constitutional immunity, leaving cupperman uncertain about what to do. quote, plaintiff obviously cannot satisfy the competing demands of both the legislative and executive branches and he is aware of no controlling judicial authority definitely establishing which branch s command should prevail, the suit said. joining us now by phone is a reporter who broke that story, michael schmidt, washington correspondent for the new york times. might be able, explain exactly what this is. well, this is a late friday filing. it s a lawsuit that chuck cooper, the lawyer for cupperman, and the lawyer for john bolton has filed in federal
part of trying to stop this. i think this was a situation where a witness and a lawyer were presented with the white house saying, no, the hill saying give us your testimony, and them saying i will go to federal court and ask a judge to make that decision. democrats are portraying this as a legal theory as extreme and an act of obstruction by the white house, you say. how quickly do you think that this is going to get ruled on? i m not sure. when things are before an impeachment proceeding, they would tend to get more urgency within the courts. but at the same time, this could be something that will play out over a long period of time. ultimately, look, kupperman was supposed to go in next week. that will not happen anymore because of this. and the democrats had certainly had some momentum over the past few weeks, really building against the president, the sort of daily interviews of witnesses