US House moves to subpoena Pompeo
Democrats prepare to build case for impeachment
House Democrats said they will ramp up their impeachment effort next week against US President Donald Trump, and on Friday the chairmen of three powerful House committees subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to their investigation into whether the president improperly pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate his political rivals.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee have pledged to stay in Washington to work through Congress’s scheduled recess next week as Democrats seek to build a case for removing the president from office.
“I can tell you it’s going to be a very busy couple of weeks ahead,” Intelligence Committee chairman Adam B Schiff told reporters. “We’re going to be trying to schedule hearings, witness interviews. We’ll be working on subpoenas and document requests. We’ll be busy.”
The House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs panels also announced Friday that it has scheduled five depositions beginning with State Department officials who would have knowledge of Trump’s engagements with Ukraine.
Democrats are working against an unofficial deadline of the end of the year to complete impeachment proceedings that currently focus on Trump’s request for “a favour” during a July telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The speaker has made it very clear that we are not to let momentum drop in these two weeks,” said Democrat Representative Jim Himes.
Democrats are treating a whistleblower complaint surrounding Trump’s call with Zelensky as a “road map” for their probe, looking to the account of how White House officials were alarmed by the call and allegedly sought to improperly keep its contents secret.
At issue is Trump’s pressing Zelensky on the call to investigate former Vice-President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic presidential contender, and his son Hunter as well as an unsubstantiated theory that Ukrainians worked with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.