WASHINGTON - US House Democrats on Friday subpoenaed the White House for documents they want to see as part of their impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump.
The chairmen of 3 House of Representatives committees said they want documents related to a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the heart of their inquiry.
The three said they were forced to issue the subpoena after the White House failed to produce documents they requested in a Sept. 9 letter.
"We deeply regret that President Trump has put us - and the nation - in this position, but his actions have left us with no choice but to issue this subpoena," said Representatives Elijah Cummings of the Oversight Committee, Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Eliot Engel of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
They gave the White House until Oct. 18 to produce the information, including who else besides Trump was on the phone call with Zelenskiy.
"This subpoena changes nothing - just more document requests, wasted time, and taxpayer dollars that will ultimately show the President did nothing wrong," White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
White House lawyers believe Trump, a Republican, can ignore lawmakers' demands until the Democratic-controlled House holds a full vote of the chamber to formally approve of the impeachment inquiry, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Earlier, the committees asked Vice President Mike Pence to hand over documents relating to a meeting he held with Zelenskiy and the call between Zelenskiy and Trump.
They gave Pence until Oct. 15 to produce any records relating to the July call and a meeting he held with Zelenskiy on Sept. 1.
According to a partial transcript of the call, Trump asked Zelenskiy the "favor" of investigating former US Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and his son, Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
At the time, the Trump administration was withholding hundreds of millions in aid for Ukraine and Democrats said they suspect Trump was using US foreign policy and taxpayer money for his personal political gain. Trump is running for re-election.
"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," Cummings, Schiff and Engel wrote in a letter to Pence.
A spokeswoman for Pence said the broad nature of the request showed that it was not "serious."
SECURITY ASSISTANCE
When Pence met with Zelenskiy, the 2 discussed the $250 million in security assistance that the US Congress had approved but that the Trump administration had not disbursed.
The investigation could lead to the approval of articles of impeachment - or formal charges - against Trump in the House. A trial on whether to remove him from office would then be held in the US Senate. Republicans who control the Senate have shown little appetite for ousting Trump.
A cache of diplomatic texts Democrats received as part of their impeachment inquiry showed US officials pressured the Ukrainian government to launch investigations that might benefit Trump's personal political agenda in exchange for a meeting of the 2 countries' leaders.
Kurt Volker, who resigned last week as Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, gave the messages to the House committees in a closed-door meeting on Thursday, and the chairmen released them later in the day.
ROMNEY PUSHES BACK
Trump has said Biden and his son are "corrupt" but has shown no evidence to back that up. The president on Thursday went a step further in his attacks on Biden when he called on China to investigate the former vice president and his son, who had business interests there.
US senator and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on Friday it was "wrong and appalling" for Trump to push other nations to investigate Biden.
"When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China's investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated," Romney said on Twitter.
Trump said on Friday he would not tie a much-anticipated trade deal with China to his desire for Beijing to investigate Joe Biden.
"One thing has nothing to do with the other," he said.
Biden leads in most opinion polls among the 19 Democrats seeking the party's nomination. His campaign has blasted Trump's efforts as desperate.
In a signal of how Kiev will handle investigations being watched in Washington, Ukrainian prosecutors said they would review 15 old probes related to Burisma's founder but added that they were unaware of any evidence of wrongdoing by Biden's son.
The White House plans to argue that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, must have the full House vote to formally approve an impeachment inquiry, a source familiar with the effort said.
Without a vote, White House lawyers believe Trump, who has called the impeachment probe a "hoax," can ignore lawmakers' requests, the source said, meaning the federal courts would presumably have to render a decision and potentially slow the march toward impeachment.
A White House letter arguing Pelosi must hold a House vote will probably be sent to Capitol Hill next week, an administration official said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway defied a subpoena and failed to appear on Monday at a congressional hearing about allegations she violated federal law, prompting a Democratic threat to hold her in contempt of Congress.
The top White House lawyer directed Conway not to appear at the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee hearing, arguing that current and former White House officials were “absolutely immune” from being required to testify before Congress, according to a letter released by the committee.
Past presidential administrations from both parties have adopted similar arguments, but some legal experts have said such immunity claims would be rejected by a judge if challenged in court.
Three weeks ago, Conway declined to appear voluntarily at a similar hearing before the committee, prompting it to vote 25-16 to subpoena her testimony. The committee wants to question her about allegations she violated the Hatch Act, a law that limits federal employees’ political activity.
The White House said in a statement that Monday's hearing was part of a "purely political campaign to harass the President and his close advisers."
President Donald Trump is stonewalling multiple congressional inquiries into him, his policies, family and business holdings.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said at Monday's hearing that it was "clear-cut" that Conway was required to comply with the subpoena.
"We are not requiring her to testify about advice she gave the President or about the White House’s policy decisions," Cummings said. "We are requiring her to testify before Congress about her multiple violations of federal law, her waste of taxpayer funds, and her actions that compromise public confidence in the integrity of the federal government."
Cummings said that if Conway did not reconsider, the committee would convene a meeting on July 25 to hold her in contempt, a move that could lead to a lawsuit seeking to force her compliance.
The Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a U.S. government watchdog agency, last month recommended Conway be fired for repeatedly violating the Hatch Act by disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.
Henry Kerner, a longtime Republican Party lawyer who runs the OSC, told last month's committee hearing that Conway left him “no choice” but to recommend her termination because she had committed “at least 10 separate Hatch Act violations, expressed no remorse and continues to express disdain” for the law.
The White House has argued that the OSC has adopted a legally dubious interpretation of the Hatch Act that chills the free-speech rights of U.S. government employees.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Monday filed suit to keep U.S. lawmakers from obtaining his financial records, the first salvo in what promises to be an escalating legal battle with Democrats in Congress.
The suit seeks to block a subpoena issued by the Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Oversight Committee for information about Trump's personal and business finances, alleging Democrats have launched "all-out political war" on Trump with subpoenas as their "weapon of choice."
The committee's subpoena sought eight years of documents from Mazars USA, an accounting firm long used by Trump to prepare financial statements, related to its investigation of allegations Trump inflated or deflated financial statements for potentially improper purposes.
Elijah Cummings, the House Oversight Committee chairman, issued the subpoena to the president's accountant after Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress in February that Trump had misrepresented his net worth.
"Chairman Cummings' subpoena is invalid and unenforceable because it has no legitimate legislative purpose," Trump's lawyers said in a filing, arguing it exceeded constitutional limits on the power of Congress to investigate.
"Its goal is to expose Plaintiffs’ private financial information for the sake of exposure, with the hope that it will turn up something that Democrats can use as a political tool against the President now and in the 2020 election," they said.
In a statement on Monday, Cummings said there was no valid legal basis to try to block the subpoena and accused the White House of "unprecedented stonewalling" in refusing to produce a single document or witness to the committee.
"This complaint reads more like political talking points than a reasoned legal brief, and it contains a litany of inaccurate information," Cummings said.
The filing was the first effort by Trump's legal team to quash multiple investigations of Trump and his finances by Democratic-led committees in Congress. His lawyers made it clear they would resist those efforts.
"Democrats are using their new control of congressional committees to investigate every aspect of President Trump’s personal finances, businesses, and even his family," Trump's lawyers said.
"Instead of working with the President to pass bipartisan legislation that would actually benefit Americans, Democrats are singularly obsessed with finding something they can use to damage the President politically," they said.
The Trump Organization, the president's privately owned real estate company, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Trump is suing in his individual capacity, and is represented by a private law firm rather than government lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Republicans on the Oversight Committee also had objected to the subpoena from Cummings, arguing it was an abuse of congressional authority to target the private financial information of Trump.
"As a firm we will respect this process and will comply with all legal obligations," Mazars said in a statement. "As with all clients, we are precluded by our professional code of conduct and corporate policy from commenting further on inquiries of this nature."
Ross Garber, a Washington lawyer who focuses on political investigations, said the lawsuit might be dismissed because of the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which offers broad legal protection to members of Congress for actions they undertake as legislators.
But Garber also said there was some merit to Trump's argument that the subpoena was brought for the improper purpose of unearthing politically damaging information about him, rather than for a legitimate legislative purpose.
"Congressional authority is vast but it is not unlimited, and the complaint raises potentially legitimate questions,” Garber said, adding that Congress would have a stronger basis for the request if it had initiated impeachment hearings, when courts have said its investigative powers are heightened.
Garber said disputes between the White House and Congress over documents are often resolved through negotiation, rather than lawsuits, and that a compromise was still possible.
The filing said Democrats have issued more than 100 subpoenas and requests "to anyone with even the most tangential connection to the President."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - Armed with subpoenas and a long list of grievances, a small group of lawmakers will lead the investigations poised to make President Donald Trump's life a lot tougher now that Democrats have won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Using their control of House committees, Democrats can demand to see Trump's long-hidden tax returns, probe possible conflicts of interest from his business empire and dig into any evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign team in the 2016 election.
Trump said early on Wednesday that House investigations would be countered by investigations of Democrats by the Senate, which remains in Republican hands after Tuesday's congressional elections.
"If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!" the president said on Twitter.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's office was not immediately available for comment on Trump's tweet.
Democrats said Republican lawmakers will no longer be able to protect Trump from a watchful Congress.
"The American people have demanded accountability from their government and sent a clear message of what they want from Congress," Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat poised to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a tweet after Democrats claimed the majority.
Trump "may not like it, but he and his administration will be held accountable to our laws and to the American people."
Nadler, once described by Trump as "one of the most egregious hacks in contemporary politics," is one of three prominent Democrats who have clashed with the president and who will take over key House committees when the new Congress convenes in January.
The others are Elijah Cummings, who will almost certainly head the House Oversight Committee, and Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee, slammed by the president as "sleazy."
Control of the committees - where they are currently the highest-ranking Democrats - will give them the power to demand documents and testimony from White House officials and important figures in Trump's campaign team and businesses, and to issue subpoenas if needed.
They will also have more money and staff for investigations that could delay or derail Trump's agenda.
"I plan to shine a light on waste, fraud, and abuse in the Trump administration," Cummings said on Wednesday.
"I want to probe senior administration officials across the government who have abused their positions of power and wasted taxpayer money, as well as President Trump's decisions to act in his own financial self-interest," he said in a statement.
The White House could respond to committee demands by citing executive privilege, but that would likely result in court battles.
A first salvo in the battle is expected to come from Representative Richard Neal, who is the likely Democratic chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee and who has said he will demand Trump's tax returns from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Such a move could set in motion a cascade of probes into any disclosures the documents might hold.
Even before the election, Schiff said his committee would look at allegations that Russian money may have been laundered though Trump's businesses and that Moscow might have financial leverage over the president.
Nadler's panel would handle any effort to impeach Trump, depending on the outcome of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's federal probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and possible Trump campaign collusion with Moscow.
The panel is expected to look for ways to protect Mueller and his probe from any Trump effort to torpedo the investigation or suppress its findings.
Trump denies any collusion by his campaign and has long denounced Mueller's investigation as a witch hunt. Moscow has denied meddling in the 2016 election.
NO RUSH TO IMPEACH
Nadler's committee is unlikely, however, to move quickly toward impeachment. He has said that any impeachment effort must be based on evidence of action to subvert the Constitution that is so overwhelming it would trouble even some Trump supporters.
Nadler, Cummings and Schiff are expected to coordinate their efforts and seek bipartisan cooperation to avoid the appearance of unbridled partisanship ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Still, Republicans accuse Democrats of preparing to abuse their authority with political attacks on Trump and his allies. They predict a partisan drive that could backfire on Democrats, like the Republican effort to impeach former President Bill Clinton did in the 1990s.
"There will be irresistible pressure to overreach in their investigations and ultimately impeach the president," said Republican strategist Michael Steel.
Cummings' team says his Oversight Committee will also focus on public issues including skyrocketing prescription drug costs, the opioid epidemic, voting rights, the Census and the U.S. Postal Service.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
