Ukraine inquiry eyes role of Pence

WASHINGTON — House impeachment investigators widened the reach of their inquiry on Friday, subpoenaing the White House for a vast trove of documents and requesting more from Vice President Mike Pence to better understand President Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

The subpoena, signed by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is for documents and communications that are highly delicate and would typically be subject in almost any White House to claims of executive privilege. If handed over, the records could provide keys to understanding what transpired between the two countries.

The request for records from a sitting vice president is unusual in its own right, and Pence’s office quickly signaled he would not comply. In a letter to Pence, the chairmen of three House committees wrote that they were interested in “any role you may have played” in conveying Trump’s views to Ukraine. They asked for a lengthy list of documents detailing the administration’s dealings with Ukraine, to be produced by Oct. 15.

“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,” said the letter to Pence, signed by Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee chairman; Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman; and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the Oversight and Reform Committee chairman.

Katie Waldman, Pence’s press secretary, promptly said that “given the scope, it does not appear to be a serious request but just another attempt by the ‘Do Nothing Democrats’ to call attention to their partisan impeachment.”

How the White House, which has routinely rejected congressional demands of this kind, responds this time could significantly shape the impeachment investigation going forward. The subpoena was issued after the White House missed a Friday deadline Democrats had imposed to voluntarily comply with their requests. Under normal circumstances, the White House could claim materials referenced in both requests were privileged, using that as adefense in court.

But that will not help Trump’s case on Capitol Hill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chairmen leading the inquiry have consistently warned the White House that noncompliance with their requests will be viewed as obstruction of Congress, a potentially impeachable offense in and of itself.

The actions came amid another day of fast-moving developments in the House impeachment investigation into allegations that Trump and his administration worked to bend America’s diplomatic apparatus for his own benefit.

A second intelligence official who was alarmed by Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistleblower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The official has more direct information about the events than the whistleblower, whose complaint that Trump was using his power to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals touched off an impeachment inquiry. The second official is among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistleblower, one of the people said.

For more than six hours, the House Intelligence Committee questioned the intelligence community’s independent watchdog who first fielded the whistleblower complaint.

Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, had received the complaint and conducted his own preliminary investigation into its validity before seeking to deliver it to Congress. He arrived on Capitol Hill on Friday morning for a briefing behind closed doors in the basement of the Capitol.

A significant subpoena deadline for the State Department to hand over similar material in its possession was also scheduled to arrive by the end of the day.

Even as they worked, lawmakers from both parties continued Friday morning to try to make sense of a tranche of texts between American diplomats and a top aide to the Ukrainian president. Those messages were released late Thursday night, and called into question the truthfulness of Trump’s claim that there had been no quid pro quo attached to his pressing Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his son and other Democrats.

As more information came to light, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, one of the few members of Trump’s party who have been critical of the conduct at the center of the impeachment inquiry, issued a statement condemning the president’s public comments on Thursday inviting China as well as Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

“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. “By all appearances, the president’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill hoped Atkinson’s account would boost their efforts to build a fuller narrative of events.

A Trump appointee, Atkinson set off the present saga less than a month ago when he notified Congress’ intelligence committees that he had received an anonymous whistleblower complaint that he deemed to be “urgent” and credible. The acting director of national intelligence intervened initially to block Atkinson from sharing the complaint with Congress, but ultimately the Trump administration relented and allowed its public release.

In the complaint, the whistle-blower wrote that multiple government officials had provided him information that “the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

Specifically, he said that Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had pressed Ukraine to conduct the investigations, potentially using the prospect of a meeting that the new Ukrainian president badly wanted with Trump and withholding $391 million in security aid earmarked for the country as leverage to secure the investigations. The White House tried to cover up aspects of the events, the complaint said.

Atkinson has already appeared once before the House Intelligence Committee, but he was barred then from speaking in detail about the complaint. Now, lawmakers expect him to detail what steps he took to verify elements of the complaint and conclude it was credible. He could possibly identify other government officials with knowledge of the events described in it.