■ House Democrats have subpoenaed Energy Secretary Rick Perry as part of their Ukraine probe.
Policy on Ukraine raised alarms before and after Trump call
WASHINGTON — House Democrats have subpoenaed Energy Secretary Rick Perry as part of their impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The House intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees sent Perry a subpoena Thursday asking him to provide documents related to a Ukrainian state-owned energy company as well as his involvement in a July call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The committees set a deadline for Oct. 18.
Also regarding the White House’s Ukraine policy, The Washington Post reported Thursday that at least four national security officials were so alarmed by the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes that they raised concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the matter.
The nature and timing of the previously undisclosed discussions with National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg indicate that officials were delivering warnings through official White House channels earlier than previously understood — including before the call that precipitated a whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry of the president.
At the time, the officials were unnerved by the removal in May of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; subsequent efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to promote Ukrainerelated conspiracies; as well as signals in meetings at the White House that Trump wanted the new government in Kyev to deliver material that might be politically damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Those concerns soared in the call’s aftermath, officials said. Within minutes, senior officials including national security adviser John Bolton were being pinged by subordinates about problems with what the president had said to Zelenskiy. Bolton and others scrambled to obtain a rough transcript that was already being “locked down” on a highly classified computer network.
Trump has said Perry teed up the July 25 call, in which Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was employed by a Ukrainian gas company.
A spokeswoman for Perry has said he wanted Trump to speak on energy matters with the Ukrainian leader as part of U.S. efforts to boost Western energy ties to Eastern Europe.
“Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the president’s stark message to the Ukrainian president,” the three Democratic chairmen wrote. “These reports have also raised significant questions about your efforts to press Ukrainian officials to change the management structure at a Ukrainian state-owned energy company to benefit individuals involved with Rudy Giuliani’s push to get Ukrainian officials to interfere in our 2020 election.”
The Associated Press reported this week that a circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted their connections to Trump and his personal lawyer, Giuliani, as they sought to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s stateowned gas company last spring.
The plan hit a snag after Zelinskiy’s election, but Perry took up the effort to install a friendlier management team at the company, Naftogaz.
Perry attended Zelinskiy’s May 2019 inauguration as the administration’s senior representative and met privately with Zelinskiy. He has denied any wrongdoing.