Some Democrats had held out hope that Mr. Bolton might not wait and would instead rely on the decision in the McGahn case to agree to testify. In her ruling, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia almost seemed to be addressing Mr. Bolton’s argument that his job was different than that of Mr. McGahn because of its focus on national security matters.
“Nor does it make any difference whether the aides in question are privy to national security matters, or work solely on domestic issues,” she wrote in her 120-page opinion.
Judge Jackson said that individual questions might still be subject to claims of executive privilege but that a president could not prevent former aides from even showing up when ordered by Congress. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.”
Mr. Bolton has not given any indication of what he would say if he does eventually testify, but he has teased that he has something to say. While Republicans have sought to dismiss the testimony of others against Mr. Trump as mere secondhand hearsay, Mr. Bolton had more direct regular access to the president than any of the witnesses who appeared over the last two weeks.
Mr. Bolton “was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far,” Mr. Cooper, his lawyer, wrote in a letter to the House earlier this month.
In a Twitter message last week, Mr. Bolton suggested that the White House had tried to keep him off social media after his departure in September “out of fear of what I may say,” a comment that could refer to his known disagreements with Mr. Trump’s foreign policy but in the hothouse environment of impeachment was taken as a tease.
Because the McGahn ruling will be appealed and any decision in Mr. Kupperman’s suit may likewise be taken to higher courts, it could be months before the judiciary settles the matter. Rather than wait, House Democrats have said they will use the White House effort to block testimony by aides like Mr. Bolton as evidence in an article of impeachment alleging obstruction of Congress. They anticipate a final House vote on impeachment by the end of the year.