Trump refuses to work with ‘kangaroo court’ inquiry
White House counsel tells Democratic leaders that impeachment proceedings are ‘partisan’ and ‘invalid’
THE White House has officially refused to co-operate with the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, it emerged last night.
An eight-page letter, signed by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and sent to Democratic leaders, rejected the entire process under way in the House of Representatives as “baseless” and “constitutionally invalid”.
Three Democratic-led House committees are investigating whether Mr Trump abused his office by seeking a corruption probe in Ukraine into his 2020 presidential election rival Joe Biden.
“President Trump cannot permit his administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances,” the letter said. “Your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretence of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections.”
The White House said it objected especially to the fact that the lower house of Congress had no formal vote to launch the impeachment inquiry.
Earlier, the administration had blocked a key witness in the Ukraine scandal from testifying to the impeachment investigation.
Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, had been expected to answer questions on his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Mr Biden and his son, Hunter.
But less than two hours before Mr Sondland was scheduled to appear, it emerged the US State Department had blocked him from testifying.
Leading Democrats condemned the action and said they would issue a subpoena for Mr Sondland’s testimony, as well as “highly relevant” emails and text messages from the ambassador that they claim the State Department has refused to turn over.
Mr Trump said on Twitter that he “would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify” but accused the impeachment inquiry of being “a totally compromised kangaroo court”.
The impeachment investigation was sparked by a whistleblower’s complaint alleging the US president had pushed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate Mr Biden, the leading Democrat in the 2020 presidential race.
As part of that inquiry, the House Intelligence Committee released a trove of text messages last week that revealed Mr Sondland played a central role in advancing Mr Trump’s agenda in Ukraine.
The committees had been expected to ask Mr Sondland why he was so involved in discussions with Ukraine, which is not an EU member.
Meanwhile, it was reported that a White House official was left “visibly shaken” after listening to the call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy and believed the president had committed a crime.
According to The New York Times, the whistleblower at the centre of the impeachment inquiry wrote a memo describing how one White House official who listened to the call described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security”.
The decision to block Mr Sondland’s testimony appears to have been made at the last minute, after the ambassador had already flown over from Brussels. Robert Luskin, Mr Sondland’s lawyer, said his client was “profoundly disappointed” he was not able to testify.
The decision came as polls showed surging support for the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry.
According to a Washington Post
Schar School poll, 58 per cent of Americans now back the proceedings, a rise of roughly 20 per cent since the Ukraine story broke.