Ukraine inquiry picks up speed
3 House panels seek documents
WASHINGTON — House investigators subpoenaed documents from the Department of Defense and Office of Management and Budget on Monday about the withholding of military aid to Ukraine as the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry barreled forward.
Three House panels key to the impeachment inquiry said Monday that they had sent subpoenas to Defense Secretary Mark Esper as well as Office of Management and Budget acting Director Russell Vought for documents related to the withholding of U.S. military aid.
“The Committees are investigating the extent to which President [Donald] Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding military assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters,” the lawmakers said in a letter.
Signing the letter were Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md.; and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
With the new subpoenas, the House is trying to unearth communica
tions and other records that might shed light on the United States’ interactions with Ukraine, including why the White House decided this summer to abruptly suspend the $391 million aid package, and whether it was connected to contemporaneous efforts by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure the country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats.
The White House has denied that the aid was being withheld to exert leverage over the Ukrainians, but at least one senior diplomat worried privately that that was precisely what was happening, and the administration has been unwilling to answer questions about the timeline and rationale for the decision. Regardless of the reasoning, the decision to withhold aid that was allocated by Congress on a bipartisan basis prompted confusion and concern within the State and Defense departments, as well as among lawmakers in both parties.
Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back the military aid for Ukraine shortly before his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Trump has repeatedly denied that there was a “quid pro quo” between the military assistance and the request to investigate the Bidens.
WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION
On Sunday, the attorney representing the whistleblower who first raised an alarm about the July call said that “multiple” whistleblowers have come forward. Trump has repeatedly accused the first whistleblower of being “partisan” without citing evidence and claimed the whistleblower was “very wrong” about the July call.
House Democrats eager to protect the whistleblower are considering testimony at a remote location and possibly obscuring the individual’s appearance and voice — extraordinary moves to prevent Trump’s congressional allies from revealing the identity, according to three officials familiar with the discussions.
Democratic investigators are concerned that without such rare precautions, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee could learn and then leak the identity of the whistleblower, who has agreed to answer questions before the intelligence committees in both the House and Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office also released an open letter signed by 90 former national security officials who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, voicing support for the whistleblower who raised concerns about Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
“A responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed, thus advancing the cause of national security to which we have devoted our careers,” they wrote. “Whatever one’s view of the matters discussed in the whistleblower’s complaint, all Americans should be united in demanding that all branches of our government and all outlets of our media protect this whistleblower and his or her identity. Simply put, he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection.”
Also on Monday, a State Department official declined to appear at a planned deposition by House committees seeking to learn more about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine. The official, George Kent, is the deputy assistant secretary of state in the European and Eurasian Bureau.
“Democrats originally scheduled him for deposition today [Monday], but his appearance has not yet been worked out or confirmed,” said a person familiar with the planned deposition who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo balked at the timing of several planned depositions of State Department officials, saying House Democrats were not giving them adequate time to prepare.
House investigators are planning to hear today from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who has become a central figure in the probe, and Friday from Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled from the post early.
Kurt Volker, the Trump administration’s former special envoy for Ukraine, announced Monday that he is resigning as executive director of the McCain Institute. Volker testified privately last week before three House committees and shared text messages that have become key to the impeachment inquiry.
Volker tendered his resignation as special envoy for Ukraine, a job he had held on a part-time basis for two years, on Sept. 27 as he became a focus of scrutiny into Trump’s communications with Ukraine’s president.
Volker said he is parting ways with the McCain Institute, which he has led since its creation in 2012, because the media’s focus on his work as special envoy “risks becoming a distraction from the accomplishments and continued growth of the Institute.”
The institute, which is part of Arizona State University, bills itself as a think tank “inspired by the leadership” of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
As the impeachment inquiry pressed forward, Republicans stepped up their attacks on Pelosi, D-Calif. Trump suggested in late-night tweets that she should be removed from office.
In a Monday tweet, Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, resurrected his idea of filing a lawsuit against Pelosi for “conspiracy to violate constitutional and civil rights.”
Pelosi sought to parlay the attacks into donations for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Late last night, President Trump took to Twitter to spew personal attacks at me,” Pelosi said in the solicitation. “Well, I have news for him: All he’s done is make me more determined than ever to keep fighting to reveal the truth about his abuses of power.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence suggested Monday that Democrats pursuing the impeachment inquiry have their priorities out of order.
“While Dems in Congress have been trying to overturn the will of the American people by reversing Election Day 2016, our Admin will continue to fight for policies that create jobs & benefit American workers,” Pence wrote in a tweet, quoting from an oped he wrote for the Arizona Daily Star.
WHITE HOUSE STRATEGY
The White House is honing its approach to countering the Democrats’ message after two weeks of what allies have described as a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe. One expected step is a letter to Pelosi rejecting the inquiry because Democrats haven’t held a vote on the matter and moving to all but cease cooperation with Capitol Hill on key oversight matters.
The strategy risks further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing Trump of obstructing their investigations.
“What they did to this country is unthinkable. It’s lucky that I’m the president. A lot of people said very few people could handle it. I sort of thrive on it,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “You can’t impeach a president for doing a great job. This is a scam.”
The White House has struggled to communicate its message beyond Trump’s angry public proclamations and tweets.
Indeed, top officials were absent from the Sunday talk shows, and the sole White House official to appear in public on Monday dodged questions on the inquiry.
Asked whether he believed the president was joking or in any way not serious when he suggested publicly that China should investigate the Bidens, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, responded: “I don’t honestly know.”
The president’s aides have ignored document requests and subpoenas, invoked executive privilege — going so far as to argue that the privilege extends to informal presidential advisers who have never held White House jobs — and all but dared Democrats to hold them in contempt.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Brittany Shammas, Felicia Sonmez, Rachael Bade, Karoun Demirjian, Tim Elfrink, John Hudson, Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Deanna Paul of The Washington Post; by Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times.