House Democrats are attempting “to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly” State Department employees into cooperating with an impeachment inquiry, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I will not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State,” Pompeo wrote in a Tuesday letter to House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel.
Pompeo’s response to the New York Democrat who oversees the State Department matched the combative tone of the House lawmakers’ demands on Friday. Engel and top Democrats gave him seven days to produce documents pertaining to President Trump’s attempt to convince Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate corruption allegations involving former Vice President Joe Biden as they launched “an expeditious, coordinated” investigation. But Pompeo, by attacking their demands for five other U.S. diplomats to testify by Oct. 10, tapped the brakes on their quick-strike investigation.
“[Y]our letter provides a woefully inadequate opportunity for the department and the requested witnesses to prepare,” Pompeo wrote to Engel, noting that in the absence of a subpoena, the deposition schedule is nothing but a “request for a voluntary appearance.”
The Democratic investigators want to speak to five diplomats and State Department officials involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine or mentioned in the whistleblower complaint that launched the impeachment inquiry. Their deposition schedule begins Wednesday with Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, the career foreign service officer who was recalled from Kiev in May amid attacks from President Trump’s family. They plan to speak Thursday with Kurt Volker, who resigned last week from his post as special representative for the war in Ukraine.
“I am concerned with aspects of your request, described more fully below, that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State,” Pompeo wrote. “I have also been made aware that committee staff has been sending intimidating communications to career department professionals who have specifically asked for committee communications to be channeled through the bureau of legislative affairs, as is customary.”
Volker, who worked in a volunteer capacity as the administration’s point man for the Ukraine crisis, has said he intends to comply with the request. But Pompeo hinted that Trump’s team might invoke executive privilege during their testimony.
“[T]he five officials subject to your letter may not attend any interview or deposition without counsel from the Executive Branch present to ensure that the Executive Branch’s constitutional authority to control the disclosure of confidential information, including deliberative matters and diplomatic communications, is not impaired,” he told Engel.
Engel, along with the chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, California’s Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings of Maryland, wants to interview three other State Department officials. The roster includes George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, as well as Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
They also want to interview State Department Counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl, whom the anonymous whistleblower mentioned as one senior official who may have listened in on Trump’s now-famous July 25 call with Zelensky.
“The Committees are conducting this investigation in an expeditious, coordinated manner,” the lawmakers wrote Friday. “The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community has determined that the whistleblower complaint raises a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ is ‘credible,’ and ‘relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities to the American people’: our free and fair elections.”
Pompeo, who reportedly also listened to the conversation, dismissed the lawmakers’ warning that “refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry” as bluster. “There is no legal basis for such a threat,” he wrote. “I urge you to exercise restraint in making such unfounded statements in the future.”
