Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is offering the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a draft of a subpoena he could use in order to compel the White House to provide documents related to former national security adviser Mike Flynn.
“The White House is obstructing our investigation on the Oversight Committee, covering up for General Flynn, and refusing to produce a single document that Chairman Chaffetz and I asked for in a bipartisan letter two months ago. I have prepared a subpoena that the Chairman could sign today. If he does not want to do that, we ask that he allow the Committee Members to vote on it,” Cummings, D-Md., said in a statement Sunday.
Flynn was fired in February after it was discovered he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Both Cummings, D-Md., and Chaffetz, R-Utah, sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on March 22 requesting documents relating to Flynn’s communications with foreign nationals, including those related to his vetting as national security adviser and his firing. The White House wrote back on April 19, saying it was unable to share the requested documents, some of which “are likely to contain classified, sensitive, and/or confidential information.”
Democrats then wrote to Chaffetz pressing him to obtain the documents as the committee “deals with classified, sensitive, and confidential information on a regular and routine basis, and this excuse is not a valid ground to withhold all documents from the Committee.” The letter also proposed a meeting with the White House, but Cummings said Chaffetz refused.
There is concern about a string of refusals by the Trump administration to be transparent that extends beyond requests by the oversight panel.
“Legitimate, credible oversight of the White House is almost non-existent across the entire House of Representatives. This problem is not limited to the Oversight Committee. The White House has not produced a single document to the Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee, or Intelligence Committee. There is no longer any excuse to allow the White House to continue stonewalling,” Cummings said.
Chaffetz earlier in the week threatened to get his “subpoena pen ready” to obtain from the FBI a memo from fired FBI Director James Comey, revealed in a news report, that said Trump pressured him to drop a probe into Flynn. Chaffetz then revealed he sent a letter to the FBI requesting the documents. Cummings contends that Chaffetz refuses to make the same threat to the White House, which contrasts to the flurry of subpoena activity last September related to the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“We need to know what the President, Vice President, White House Counsel, and others knew when they made General Flynn National Security Advisor and gave him access to our nation’s most highly classified secrets,” Cummings said. “We don’t have any White House documents about the vetting process they used, whether General Flynn’s lawyers warned the White House that he was under investigation, contacts General Flynn had with the Russian ambassador, what the White House knew about General Flynn’s lobbying for Turkish interests, or why the President let General Flynn keep his security clearance even after Sally Yates warned that he was compromised. That’s why we need the subpoena.”
Chaffetz revealed on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday the he plans to meet with Comey on Monday.
Proposed Subpoena to White House by Daniel on Scribd
