Trump refuses to comply in inquiry
House Dems: President’s stance is regarded as obstruction
WASHINGTON » The White House declared war on the House impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, announcing that it would not cooperate with what it called an illegitimate and partisan effort “to overturn the results of the 2016 election” of Donald Trump.
In a letter to House Democratic leaders, the White House counsel said the inquiry violated precedent and Trump’s due process rights in such an egregious way that neither he nor the executive branch would willingly provide testimony or documents, a daring move that sets the stage for a constitutional clash.
“Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice,” said the eightpage letter signed by Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. “In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.”
The letter came hours after the White House blocked the interview of a key witness, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, just hours before he was to appear on Capitol Hill.
Trump, defiant as investigators dig further into his efforts to pressure Ukraine to find dirt on his political rivals, ridiculed the inquiry as spurious, signaling even before the release of
the top White House lawyer’s letter that he planned to stonewall Congress, an act that could itself build the case for charging him in an impeachment proceeding with obstruction.
“I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning around the time Sondland was to appear, “but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away.”
Earlier on Tuesday, House Democrats said they would regard the president’s stance as obstruction. Rep. Adam Schiff, DCalif., and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration’s refusal to allow Sondland to appear was “strong evidence” of “obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress, a coequal branch of
government.”
Schiff told reporters that the State Department was also withholding text messages Sondland had sent on a private device that were “deeply relevant” to the inquiry. He later indicated the House would issue a subpoena for his testimony and the messages.
“The American people have the right to know if the president is acting in their interests, in the nation’s interests with an eye toward our national security, and not in his narrow personal, political interests,” Schiff told reporters. “By preventing us from hearing from this witness and obtaining these documents, the president and secretary of state are taking actions that prevent us from getting the facts needed to protect the nation’s security.”
The decision to block Sondland from being interviewed was delivered at the last minute, after the ambassador had already flown to Washington from Europe, and lawmakers had returned from a two-week recess to observe the questioning.
Trump administration lawyers and aides have spent days puzzling over how to respond to the impeachment inquiry, and the abrupt move suggested that the president’s team has calculated that he is better off risking the House’s ire — and even an impeachment article focused on the obstruction — than setting a precedent for cooperation with an investigation they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.
The strategy, if it holds, carries substantial risk to the White House. Privately, some Republicans had urged the White House to allow witnesses like Sondland to appear, in order to deflate Democratic accusations of a cover-up and offer a public rationale for the president’s actions toward Ukraine. Now, some Republicans worry, Democrats have more fodder to argue publicly that Trump has something to hide.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was too early to know whether Democrats might draft an article of impeachment based on the obstruction issue, akin to one adopted by the House
Judiciary Committee in the 1970s impeachment proceedings against Richard M. Nixon.
“The president is obstructing Congress from getting the facts that we need,” Pelosi told reporters in Seattle, where she was holding an unrelated event. “It is an abuse of power for him to act in this way.”
Sondland has become enmeshed in the burgeoning saga of how the president sought to push the Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his son and Democrats. Although Ukraine is not in the EU, Trump instructed Sondland — a wealthy hotelier and contributor to his campaign — to take a lead in his administration’s dealings with the country.
Democrats consider him a key witness to what transpired, including whether the president sought to use a $391 million package of security assistance and the promise of a White House meeting as bargaining chips to essentially bully President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine into digging up dirt on the Bidens
and other Democrats.
Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill rushed to his defense on Tuesday and condemned Schiff and the Democrats for running what they described as an unfair process, though they made clear they thought Sondland would have been a helpful witness for the president’s case.
“We were looking forward to hearing from Ambassador Sondland,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight and Reform Committee, adding that Republicans believed Sondland would “reinforce exactly” what lawmakers and aides heard least week from Kurt D. Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. Volker told investigators he knew of nothing improper between the two countries, although he turned over a trove of documents that raised further questions.
“But we understand exactly why the administration, exactly why the State Department has chosen to say, ‘Look if it’s going to be this kind of process …,’ ” Jordan added.
And in the Senate, Trump’s allies shifted into high gear to orchestrate a counteroffensive on his behalf. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would invite Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who was deeply involved in the pressure campaign on Ukraine, to testify before his panel. Giuliani led the push to enlist the Ukrainians to help investigate the business dealings of the Bidens and a conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
“Given the House of Representatives’ behavior, it is time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine,” Graham said.
Democrats did not flinch at the suggestion, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, Graham’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, said she looked forward to questioning “Rudy Giuliani under oath about his role in seeking the Ukrainian government’s assistance to investigate one of the president’s political rivals.”