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The Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee gave the federal agencies until Oct. 15 to comply with its request for documents. The panel appears to be trying to unearth communications and other records that might shed light on one of the enduring mysteries of the United States’ interactions with Ukraine: why the White House decided last summer to abruptly suspend a $391 million aid package, and whether it was connected to contemporaneous efforts by President Trump and his personal lawyer to pressure the country to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats.
The House subpoenaed the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget for documents about the Trump administration’s decision to withhold $391 million in security aid for Ukraine.
“The enclosed subpoena demands documents that are necessary for the committees to examine this sequence of these events and the reasons behind the White House’s decision to withhold critical military assistance to Ukraine that was appropriated by Congress to counter Russian aggression,” read the letters, signed by Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee; Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee; and Representative Eliot L. Engel, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state and Ukraine expert, did not appear for a scheduled deposition with House Democrats, and several other witness interviews scheduled for this week are in doubt. Still, two key figures from the State Department were confirmed for depositions: Gordon Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, on Tuesday, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, on Friday.
— Nicholas Fandos
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo missed a Friday deadline to produce documents, even as the State Department continues talks with the House.
Read more: Seeking Ukraine Aid Records, House Subpoenas White House Budget Office and Pentagon
I asked my colleague Charlie Savage what was at stake here: “It was predictable that the Trump administration would balk at turning over the subpoenaed documents related to the Ukraine matter — including many internal White House communications that any administration would see as covered by executive privilege,” he told me. “But the subpoena will likely also allow the House, if it chooses, to link an impeachment article about obstruction directly to the Ukraine scandal.”
An intelligence official with “firsthand knowledge” has provided information related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and is now protected from retaliation as a whistle-blower, lawyers representing the official said on Sunday, confirming that a second individual has come forward in the matter.
More on that note: The Miami Herald reported today that two Florida businessmen who helped connect Rudy Giuliani to Ukrainian politicians would not comply with a request for documents and depositions from the three House committees conducting the impeachment investigation.
Much is unknown about the official, who has been interviewed by the intelligence community’s inspector general but has not filed a formal complaint.
Over the weekend, we learned that a new whistle-blower with “firsthand knowledge” has provided information related to President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. His lawyers are also representing the first whistle-blower, and say that both are now legally protected from retaliation.
But the individual has hired the same legal team as the first whistle-blower. That, and the claim of “firsthand knowledge,” suggests testimony that might bolster the impeachment case against Mr. Trump and further undermine one of his main defense claims: that the accusations against him are based on inaccurate, secondhand information.
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The New York Times reported on Friday that an intelligence official who has more direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine than the first whistle-blower, and who had grown alarmed by the president’s behavior, was weighing whether to come forward. The second official was among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistle-blower, one of the people briefed on the matter said.
I asked Lara Jakes, who covers the State Department, about Mr. Pompeo’s delay tacticsin the impeachment investigation. She got back to me from a busy press room, just after she finished some reporting on Mr. Trump’s decision to pull back from military involvement in Syria.
— Annie Karni and Nicholas Fandos
Lara, we seem to have hit a stalling point in witness depositions. What recourse do Mr. Pompeo and the State Department have at this point? Can he simply block these witnesses from testifying?
Read more: Legal Team Says It Represents a Second Whistle-Blower Over Trump and Ukraine
It’s not that cut and dried. He hasn’t said he won’t let them take part. He’s said he wants them to have time to consult with administration lawyers. He accused Democrats of going straight to the diplomats and asking them to talk to investigators without the State Department’s knowing or approving of it. In some cases, the administration might claim some executive privilege to prevent some employees from testifying. Mr. Pompeo also could be called as a witness. He was on the call with Trump and the Ukrainian president.
Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, surveyed 10 former White House chiefs of staff under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and found that none recalled any circumstance under which the White House had solicited or accepted political help from other countries, and all said they would have considered the very idea out of bounds.
What official action, then, can he take?
One day in October 1992, four Republican congressmen showed up in the Oval Office with an audacious recommendation. President George Bush was losing his re-election race, and they told him the only way to win was to hammer his challenger Bill Clinton’s patriotism for protesting the Vietnam War while in London and visiting Moscow as a young man.
He could try to delay. And that is what we have seen so far, such as the case of Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine. He said this weekend that he’s going to comply with subpoenas as much as the law requires. It may not be as quick as the House Democrats want. It may be more than what the Trump administration writ large is 100 percent comfortable with. But there will be some kind of meeting in the middle.
Mr. Bush was largely on board with that approach. But what came next crossed the line, as far as he and his team were concerned. “They wanted us to contact the Russians or the British to seek information on Bill Clinton’s trip to Moscow,” James A. Baker III, Mr. Bush’s White House chief of staff, wrote in a memo later that day. “I said we absolutely could not do that.”
The State Department is now juggling the news of Mr. Trump’s decision to pull back in the Middle East with all of activity around impeachment, right?
Read more from Mr. Baker’s report here.
It’s odd, because last week when all of the impeachment stories were breaking, we couldn’t get much information at all out of the State Department on almost any topic. This morning, the State Department is talking about Syria and Turkey and very eager to relay its side of the story. It shows how many complex issues American diplomacy is facing, and on such a fast-moving timeline.
The escalating impeachment drama between Congress and the White House that has all but doomed hopes of most legislative progress this fall has instead enhanced the prospects for approval, within weeks, of one major initiative: a sweeping new trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
A federal judge allowed the Manhattan district attorney’s office to move forward with a subpoena seeking eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, rejecting an argument that sitting presidents are immune from criminal investigations. Here are some key takeaways from that ruling.
Top lawmakers in both parties and others closely following the talks said substantial progress had been made in resolving the remaining sticking points over the pact, and that a decisive House vote on the accord to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement could occur before Congress departs for Thanksgiving.
We surveyed former White House chiefs of staff under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. None of them recalled a time when the White House solicited or accepted political help from a foreign country.
The deal may be a rare bright spot in an otherwise dysfunctional dynamic that has taken hold in the capital, and it owes its progress to a coincidence of timing, productive negotiations that have unfolded behind closed doors for months and political necessity for two parties that each have distinct reasons to hope it succeeds.
The Associated Press outlined the different things we can expect to see this week in the impeachment investigation, adding to The Washington Post’s useful impeachment calendar.
— Carl Hulse and Emily Cochrane
Read more: Impeachment Fight May Help a New NAFTA Deal
President Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
