Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson rebuked the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Gary Peters, for stalling a committee subpoena vote related to the Burisma investigation.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who is spearheading the investigation into the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which is connected to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, wants to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former low-level aide at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who is now a consultant in Kyiv.
Telizhenko claimed he was told by a top aide for Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States that he should assist former Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa in her alleged 2016 anti-Trump efforts, the Washington Examiner previously reported. Chalupa denied this charge.
Since Feb. 24, Johnson and Peters have been battling over the Telizhenko subpoena. In Johnson’s initial letter to Peters, he stated his intention to issue the subpoena.
Peters sent a letter to Johnson on March 1 urging Johnson to withhold the subpoena of Telizhenko until questions concerning 2020 election interference were answered by the intelligence community and the FBI.
Johnson sent a scathing letter Monday to Peters asking why minority staff did not follow up with the FBI if they had additional concerns.
“I have spoken with the intelligence committee and received a classified intelligence product which I have made available to every Committee member. Our staff also received a briefing from the FBI on February 28, 2020,” Johnson wrote.
“Although the FBI directly and thoroughly answered the staff’s questions, it is clear they were not the answers your staff had hoped to hear. During the call, minority staff asked the FBI to speak further in a classified setting. The FBI unequivocally agreed to meet to answer any additional questions, and told your staff who they could contact to set up that briefing. To my knowledge, your staff never contacted those individuals,” he wrote.
Johnson defended the investigation, saying, “We have conducted our investigations methodically, responsibly, and largely out of public view. We have gone to great lengths to receive briefings and review and verify all information received by the Committee before making any of it public.”
He added, “Unfortunately, you did object and continue to use ‘disinformation efforts by Russia’ as a boogie man to justify opposition to this narrow subpoena involving records associated with a U.S.-based lobbying firm.”
In his March 1 letter to Johnson, Peters said staffers from their committee along with the Senate Judiciary Committee and Finance Committee participated in a Feb. 28 unclassified phone call with the FBI about their concerns related to Telizhenko.
Peters wrote, “During the call, Minority staff informed the FBI they had questions about Mr. Telizhenko that could only be asked in a classified setting, and the FBI agreed to provide the Committee with that opportunity. That classified briefing has not yet happened.”
Peters continued, “Similarly, since December, I have sought to have the Committee arrange a bipartisan briefing with the Intelligence Community (IC), about foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election related to this investigation. That classified briefing has also not happened yet.”
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to reflect further comments made in the March 9 letter from Sen. Ron Johnson to Sen. Gary Peters
