Mike Pompeo subpoenaed for documents related to Ukraine
The Democratic chairmen of three powerful House committees on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to President Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which he requested that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
In a letter to Pompeo, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings wrote that their three committees are investigating "the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression."
As part of the House impeachment inquiry, the chairmen informed Pompeo that he was being subpoenaed produce the documents by October 4. Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday.
The chairmen had previously sent two letters requesting the documents from Pompeo, and he complied with neither.
The letter caps a tumultuous week in Washington which saw the Trump administration release a memorandum summarizing the call between Mr. Trump and Zelensky. The call was a subject of a whistleblower complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community and had initially been withheld from Congress by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The complaint was released on Thursday, shortly before Maguire testified to the House Intelligence Committee.
The summary, which was not a verbatim transcript, showed that the president urged Zelensky to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to investigate the aspects of the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, as well as "the other thing" — Biden's efforts in 2016 to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor widely seen by the West as corrupt.
Mr. Trump and Giuliani have alleged Biden acted to remove the prosecutor to protect his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had been under investigation. The whistleblower's complaint noted Giuliani's outreach to Ukrainian officials on this topic, citing information from press reports.
Giuliani told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that he didn't act on his own — "I went to meet Mr. Zelinsky's aide at the request of the State Department. Fifteen memos make that clear."
The chairmen also sent a separate letter to Pompeo notifying him that the committees had scheduled depositions for former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, and U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland — all of whom were mentioned in the whistleblower complaint.
