With that in mind, if we assume that the latest reporting is true, it's hard not to wonder why, exactly, Barr didn't simply say, "Yes, sir" after hearing of Trump's appeal.
"We regret Mr. Bolton's decision not to appear voluntarily, but we have no interest in allowing the administration to play rope-a-dope with us in the courts for months", the House Intelligence official said.
"As I emphasized in my previous responses to letters from the House Chairs, Dr. Kupperman stands ready, as does Ambassador Bolton, to testify if the Judiciary resolves the conflict in favor of the Legislative Branch's position respecting such testimony", Cooper wrote.
So far, most officials who work in the executive branch have declined to co-operate with the investigation, although an adviser to Vice-President Mike Pence appeared as requested on Thursday.
"Tim [Morrison] indicated that he had talked to Gordon [Sondland], and Gordon had told him, Tim, and Tim told Bill Taylor, that he, Gordon, had talked to the President, POTUS in sort of shorthand, and POTUS wanted nothing less than [for] President Zelensky to go to [the] microphone and 'investigations, Biden, and Clinton, '" Kent said of a conversation that took place over WhatsApp as recently as September.
The acting White House chief of staff didn't exactly get a ringing endorsement from Trump on Sunday, who was asked if he still has confidence in Mulvaney.
It was a starkly cooler reception than Trump gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow's ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, weeks earlier when Trump met with them in the same location.
Lawmakers leaving the deposition said that Williams' testimony had lined up with the accounts of others. "I mean-he wasn't inferring that they were cooking up an actual drug deal in the Ward Room", she said.
Burkovskiy added: 'The Zelensky team was ready to make this quid quo pro.
"So, if nobody in the Ukrainian government is aware of a military hold at the time of the Trump-Zelensky call, then, as a matter of law and as a matter of fact, there can be no quid pro quo, based on military aid", Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, said.
The White House claims the release of two transcripts Tuesday shows "there is even less evidence" for impeachment than previously thought.
On Wednesday - a week ahead of his scheduled public hearing - House Democrats released a transcript of his evidence.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff announced on Wednesday that three State Department witnesses will appear in two hearings next Wednesday and Friday - top Ukraine diplomat William Taylor, career department official George Kent and Marie Yovanovitch, the former USA ambassador to Ukraine.
Hale was reportedly planning to tell investigators that the state department's leadership decided that battling Giuliani and the White House over Yovanovitch would expend political capital it needed to persuade Trump to restore the military aid.
Kent and William B Taylor Jr, the top diplomat in Ukraine, will be the first witnesses called by the Democrats to testify in a set of highly anticipated hearings that are likely to be televised live.
Kent, Yovanovitch and Taylor are expected to appear in the upcoming public hearing.
Still, Democrats have indicated they think they already have ample testimony about Trump's conduct on Ukraine.
"That was my clear understanding, security assistance money would not come until the president [of Ukraine] committed to pursue the investigation", Taylor said, according to the transcript.
"The State Department operations center agreed", Taylor said in closed-door testimony.
