House Democrats warned Donald Trump Wednesday that a subpoena would come on Friday if the White House does not hand over a broad range of documents on the Ukraine plus records of the president’s calls with other foreign leaders – a request Trump called ‘bull***t.’
‘The White House’s flagrant disregard of multiple voluntary requests for documents – combined with stark and urgent warnings from the Inspector General about the gravity of these allegations – have left us with no choice but to issue this subpoena,’ Oversight Committee Chairmen Elijah Cummings wrote.
He asked for 13 separate batches of documents related to Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – the latest move in the Democrats’ escalating impeachment inquiry into the president. The documents are believe to be kept on a computer server for ‘highly sensitive’ information .
Wednesday alone saw several developments, including Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff accusing the president of witness intimidation, the State Department inspector general requesting an ‘unusual’ briefing with congressional staff, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirming he was on the call with Trump and Zelensky.
Trump raged against Democrats in during an Oval Office sit-down with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and he tweeted out several thoughts on the news of the day, including blasting the Democrats for their ‘bull***t.’
‘The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULL***T, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306. Get a better candidate this time, you’ll need it!,’ he wrote on Twitter.
House Democrats warned Donald Trump that a subpoena would come on Friday if the White House does not hand over a broad range of info on Ukraine
President Trump raged against Democrats in during an Oval Office sit-down with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and he tweeted out several thoughts on the news of the day, including blasting the Democrats for their ‘bull***t’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff warned the White House not to stone wall the impeachment investigation
The lawmakers are requesting all information – including recordings, transcripts and notes – from the president’s April 21, 2019, and July 25, 2019, telephone conversations with Zelensky.
They also want any communication on the call made with Attorney General William Barr, the National Security Council, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
But they also want Trump’s conversations with any other foreign leader that touched on the topic he spoke with Zelensky in their July 25 phone call – that the Ukrainian president should investigate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s dealings in the Ukraine.
The memo sent to the White House – and specifically directed to acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney – asks for ‘communications between President Trump and the leader of any other foreign country that refer or relate to the subject matters of the July 25 telephone conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky.’
And Democrats also target Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has pushed for a Ukrainian investigation into unproven allegations Joe Biden interfered into a Ukrainian probe of a gas company where his son Hunter Biden sat on the board.
They are asking for all information ‘between or among current or former White House officials or employees, including President Trump,’ and Giuliani.
Additionally, they want all information on White House efforts ‘to identify or retaliate against the whistleblower’ who detailed Trump’s call with Zelensky, which set off the impeachment inquiry. Trump has pressed for the person’s identification.
The 10-page request to the administration is the Democrats’ next step in the fast-moving impeachment investigation, as the lawmakers escalated their demands for information.
‘We are proceeding deliberately but at the same time we feel a real sense of urgency here that this work needs to get done and it into evidence to get done in a responsible period of time,’ Schiff told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday.
‘We are concerned that the White House will attempt to stonewall our investigation much as they have stonewalled other committees in the past,’ he noted.
”We don’t want this to drag on months and months and months, which appears to be the administration’s strategy. So they just need to know even as they try to undermine our ability to find the facts around the president’s effort to coerce a foreign leader to create dirt that he can use against a political opponent, that they will strengthening the case on obstruction if they behave that way, Schiff warned.
Earlier this week, Cummings, , Adam Schiff and Eliot Engle – the chairmen of the Oversight, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees respectively – issued subpoenas to Pompeo and Giuliani for information in their probe.
The three committees have jurisdiction in the matter and the chairmen are coordinating their efforts.
Shortly after the subpoena threat hit the White House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schiff held a press conference on Capitol Hill, where impeachment was the dominate topic.
‘We will treat the president with fairness,’ Pelosi said of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, but, she warned there were still facts to be learned, indicating there are more requests and subpoenas to come from the Democrats as they move forward with their inquiry.
‘What was the State Department’s role? What was the secretary’s role? What was the role of the attorney general? There is a great more we need to know to understand the full depth of the president’s misconduct,’ she said.
However, she issued a blunt warning to Trump about his call with his Ukrainian counterpart.
‘In that telephone call, the president undermined our national security,’ she said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff held a press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday to update on impeachment inquiry
Additionally, Schiff warned the president not to threaten the whistle-blower from testifying before his committee and accused Trump of ‘witness intimidation.’
”The president wants to make this all about the whistle-blower and suggest people that come forward with evidence of his wrong-doing are somehow treasonous and should be treated as traitors and spies. This is a blatant effort to intimidate witnesses. It’s an incitement of violence and I would hope and we are starting to see members of both parties speaking out against attacking this whistle-blower,’ he said.
Trump has said he wants to meet the whistle-blower and warned there could ‘big consequences’ from his actions – which the whistle-blower’s have used to argue the person fears for their physical safety.
The president also has called the whistle-blower a ‘spy.’
‘The whistleblower said terrible things about the call, but I then found out he was secondhand and third hand. In other words, he didn’t know what was on the call. No. These are bad people, these are dishonest people,’ Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office.
‘In other words, he either got it totally wrong, made it up or the person giving the information to the whistleblower was dishonest. And this country has to find out who that person was, because that person’s a spy, in my opinion,’ he noted.
Trump sent out multiple tweets before and after the Democrats’ press conference, attacking Schiff, who has been a repeated target of his fury, and mocking Pelosi’s stated desire to work on legislation.
‘Adam Schiff should only be so lucky to have the brains, honor and strength of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. For a lowlife like Schiff, who completely fabricated my words and read them to Congress as though they were said by me, to demean a First in Class at West Point, is SAD!,’ he wrote.
Pelosi spent the first few minutes of the press conference discussing Democrats’ work on a measure to lower prescription drug costs and the negotiations going on behind-closed-doors to pass Trump’s USMCA trade deal.
Trump mocked her words.
‘Nancy Pelosi just said that she is interested in lowering prescription drug prices & working on the desperately needed USMCA. She is incapable of working on either. It is just camouflage for trying to win an election through impeachment. The Do Nothing Democrats are stuck in mud!,’ Trump wrote as the two Democrats’ talked.
President Trump blasted Schiff and Pelosi as they held their press conference on Capitol Hill
The Democrats’ warning to the White House comes as Pompeo confirmed Wednesday he was on Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president but said the conversation was about helping the country battle corruption and deal with the threat Russia posed to it.
Pompeo, speaking at a press conference in Rome, did not answer a question about whether he heard anything on the call – which was revealed in a whistle-blower complaint that led to an impeachment inquiry into the president – that concerned him.
‘I was on the phone call,’ he said in his first public admission on the subject. ‘It was the context of I’d been a secretary of state for coming on a year and a half. I know precisely what the American policy is with respect to Ukraine. It’s been remarkably consistent and we will continue to try to drive those set of outcomes.’
He argued the call was about ‘taking down the threat’ Russia posed to the country and helping them battle corruption.
‘It was on taking down the threat that Russia poses there in the Ukraine. It was about helping Ukrainians to get graft out and corruption outside of their government and to help now this new government in the Ukraine build a successful thriving economy. It’s what the State Department officials that I had the privilege to lead had been engaged in,’ Pompeo added.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed he was on Donald Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president
Pompeo said the call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump was about battling corruption in the country and dealing with the threat Russia poses to it
It was the president’s push on that July 25 call to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden that prompted the formal impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives.
The president maintains that Biden, when he was vice president, interfered in a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation of a gas company that had Hunter Biden on its board. There has been no evidence to back up his allegation. And some of his staff reportedly told him the theory was false.
Pompeo did not address that part of the call in his remarks Wednesday.
The revelation Pompeo was on the phone call has pulled the secretary of state into the growing political scandal, which has already engulfed Attorney General William Barr. It’s put both Cabinet officials under increased scrutiny for their actions.
His confirmation of being on the call comes as the State Department inspector general requested an urgent meeting with Congressional staffers on Ukraine.
State inspector general Steve Linick plans to ‘provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine’ Wednesday afternoon in a bipartisan closed-door briefing with relevant congressional committees, a source told CNN.
A congressional aide described the request as ‘highly unusual and cryptically worded.’
Additionally at his press conference in Rome with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio, Pompeo also pushed back against a request from House Democrats for interviews with State Department staff about the administration’s dealings with Ukraine.
Schiff criticized Pompeo on his move.
‘We are deeply concerned about Secretary Pompeo’s effort now to potentially interfere with witnesses whose testimony is needed before our committee, many of whom are mentioned in the whistleblower complaint and we want to make it abundantly clear that any effort by the secretary, by the president or anyone else to interfere with the congress’ ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction of the lawful functions of Congress,’ he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Trump snapped back at Schiff during a photo op with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
‘That guy couldn’t carry his blank strap,’ he criticized Schiff in regards to Pompeo. It’s believed the president meant to say ‘jock strap.’
The secretary of state argued the request violated separation of powers and said he would not let his staff be bullied by lawmakers.
‘What we objected to was the demands that were put that deeply violate fundamental principles of separation of powers. They contacted State Department employees directly. Told them not to contact legal counsel at the State Department. That’s been reported to us. They said that the State Department wouldn’t be able to be present. There are important constitutional prerogatives that the executive branch asked to be present so we could protect the important information,’ he said.
‘We will, of course, do our constitutional duty to cooperate with this co-equal branch. But we are going to do so in a way that is consistent with the fundamental values of the American system. And we won’t tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying, intimidating State Department employees. That’s unacceptable and that’s not something I’m going to permit to happen,’ he added.
Pompeo on Tuesday fired off an angry letter to a House Committee chairman blasting efforts at ‘bullying’ his staffers into providing information – in a new show of resistance to what has become an impeachment inquiry.
Trump raged about Democrats during a photo op with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in the Oval Office
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted what he called an ‘attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly’ foreign service officers by a House Committee seeking to interview them
Pompeo wrote House Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel amid an effort to haul in State Department staff to talk about what a whistle-blower says is an effort by President Trump to abuse power and force Ukraine to help his 2020 election campaign.
He wrote as key figures – including the prior U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who got pushed out and the recently-resigned U.S. envoy to Ukraine are scheduled to be deposed.
‘I am concerned with aspects of your request … that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers, whom the committee is now targeting,’ Pompeo inveighed.
The nation’s top diplomat, a key Trump ally, declared: ‘I will not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State.’
His resistance could signal a continued administration hard line against assisting congressional inquiries even during impeachment.
The whistle-blower who raised bombshell allegations about Trump’s Ukraine dealings has been revealed to be a CIA officer. Pompeo ran the CIA before Trump nominated him to run the State Department.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly
Pompeo is resisting requests by Rep. Eliot Engel and other Democratic committee chairmen
Pompeo posted his response on Twitter
Pompeo complained the committee had provided no ‘notice of deposition’ and constitutes a ‘voluntary request’
He also complained that State Department lawyers will not be present. He said five state officials ‘may not attend’ without a government lawyer
SAY CHEESE: Pompeo was presented a block of Parmesan by Italian journalist Alice Martinelli (not in picture) from Italy’s Mediaset television programm ‘Le Iene’ (The Hyenas), during Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s and Pompeo’s meeting on October 1, 2019 at Palazzo Chigi in Rome
Pompeo’s objection comes as Trump’s former special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, will testify before lawmakers on the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees on Thursday.
And former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will give a deposition on Oct. 11, Reuters reported.
Lawmakers also want to speak with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
It’s unclear if those three have agreed to testify.
Pompeo’s letter lays out several procedural complaints. ‘The committee has not issued any subpoenas for depositions, and we are not aware of any other authority by which the committee to could compel appearance at a deposition,’ says the letter.
But even after his complaints about the requests, Pompeo vented that the requests provide witnesses a ‘woefully inadequate opportunity’ to prepare – a possible indication they would appear if they had time to consult with lawyers and get documents in order.
Among the reasons put forward for Democrats labeling their inquiry as having to do with impeachment are arguments an impeachment inquiry will raise the stakes and be looked on as critical oversight by the courts should the Trump White House continue all-out resistance.
Pompeo posted the letter on Twitter, rather than first providing it to the congressional committee.
Trump’s former special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker (left), will appear on Thursday before a Democratic-led committee in the House of Representatives. Maria Yovanovitch (right), the former ambassador to Ukraine, will be deposed on October 11
Pompeo flew to Italy on Monday and was accompanied by pugnacious former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka.
‘It’s not quite Air Force One, but it’s very close,’ Gorka tweeted.
The trip came on a day when it was reported Pompeo was on Trump’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
According to a transcript flagged by a whistle-blower, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and a conspiracy theory that Ukraine has a server containing Democratic emails from 2016.
On Sept. 22, ABC’s Martha Radditz asked Pompeo about the whistle-blower matter. ‘What do you know about those conversations?’ she asked him.
He responded by not disclosing what he knew. At the time, it had not been revealed he was on the call.
He answered: ‘So, you just gave me a report about a I.C. whistle-blower complaint, none of which I’ve seen. I can tell you about this administration’s policies with Ukraine,’ he responded.
In his letter Pompeo musters a series of procedural arguments that may have been aided by lawyers – as Trump’s lawyers claim the whistle-blower had outside help.
Pompeo complains the committee had provided no ‘notice of deposition’ required by House rules and constitutes a ‘voluntary request.’
He also complained that State Department lawyers will not be present. He said five state officials ‘may not attend’ without a government lawyer.
He also complained about language in Democratic letters that failure to attend would constitute evidence of obstruction. ‘There is no legal basis for such a threat,’ he wrote. He urged Engel to exercise ‘restraint’ in the future about such language.
He also said the requested dates ‘are not feasible,’ but will get back in touch ‘in the near future.’