Judge Dismisses Impeachment Lawsuit After Democrats Pull Plug on Witness

Breitbart: A federal judge in Washington, D.C. dismissed a lawsuit Monday that sought to determine whether a witness had to obey a subpoena from the impeachment inquiry after Democrats withdrew the subpoena and impeached Trump anyway.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon decided Monday that the suit filed by Charles Kupperman, a former aide to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, was moot because the subpoena had already been withdrawn. The House Intelligence Committee had sought to compel Kupperman’s testimony as part of its inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, alleging he withheld U.S. aid in return for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, who at the time was leading polls to win the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

Other witnesses in the inquiry indicated that Bolton had been skeptical of the efforts of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who testified that he believed there had been a “quid pro quo” (though he was told directly by Trump that there was not). Bolton was said to have criticized Sondland’s so-called “drug deal.”

The House Intelligence Committee sought to compel the testimony of senior administration officials, but the White House instructed them not to cooperate with what it described as an illegitimate inquiry that disobeyed the rules of previous impeachment investigations. Kupperman had approached the courts to ask whom he was required to obey. read more