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White House Declares War on Impeachment Inquiry, Alleging Effort to Undo Trump’s Election White House Declares War on Impeachment Inquiry, Claiming Effort to Undo Trump’s Election
(about 3 hours later)
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 J. Trump. 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 effort “to overturn the results of the 2016 election” and setting the stage for a constitutional clash with far-reaching consequences.
In a letter to House Democratic leaders, the White House said the inquiry violated precedent and President 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. In a letter to House Democratic leaders, the White House said the inquiry has violated precedent and denied President Trump’s due process rights in such an egregious way that neither he nor the executive branch would willingly provide testimony or documents.
“Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice,” said the eight-page letter signed by Pat A. 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.” “Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice,” said the letter signed by Pat A. 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 D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, just hours before he was to appear on Capitol Hill. But in refusing to cooperate with what Mr. Trump on Tuesday called a “kangaroo court,” the president risked ensuring the very outcome he would rather avoid. House Democrats made clear that they may consider his failure to comply with their demands for information to be obstruction that could form the basis for its own article of impeachment.
Mr. 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. “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,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, told reporters earlier in the day.
“I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning around the time Mr. Sondland was to appear, “but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away.” The letter came shortly after the White House blocked the interview of a key witness, Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, just hours before he was to appear on Capitol Hill. A senior administration official said no other witnesses or documents would be provided, putting a “full halt” to cooperation.
The president’s decision to resist across the board is itself a potentially precedent-setting move that could have far-reaching implications for the inquiry. Democrats believe that it bolsters their list of impeachable offenses, adding the stonewalling of Congress to the tally, but it could also deprive them of crucial witnesses and evidence they might need to lodge credible charges against the president.
It came after days of confusion, uncertainty and debate inside the White House and among Mr. Trump’s allies about his strategy as investigators dig into his efforts to pressure Ukraine to provide damaging information about his domestic rivals.
Only last week, Mr. Trump publicly vowed to participate in the inquiry, saying that, “I always cooperate” and that “we’ll work together” with Democrats, even though he considered the allegations against him to be meritless.
He reversed himself after investigators were given text messages that called into question his assertion that there was no quid pro quo when he pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate Democrats while dangling a White House invitation and withholding American security assistance.
The decision to block Mr. Sondland’s testimony frustrated some House Republicans. A group of them visited the president earlier Tuesday and explained why they hoped to hear from Mr. Sondland, a person briefed on the meeting said, in part because he has already denied any quid pro quo.
As Mr. Trump braced for a full-fledged battle, he had lunch on Tuesday with Trey Gowdy, a former South Carolina congressman who has been in talks about joining the president’s legal team. An administration official said Mr. Gowdy, who led the House inquiry into American deaths in Benghazi, Libya, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, had agreed to represent Mr. Trump, but two others involved in the matter said it was not a done deal.
Republicans made clear they would not simply rest on defense but would mount a counteroffensive on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would invite Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was deeply involved in the pressure campaign on Ukraine, to testify before his panel.
Democrats did not flinch at the suggestion. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, Mr. 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.”
In an interview, Mr. Giuliani said he had not decided whether to appear before Mr. Graham’s committee but would probably follow the White House’s lead and refuse to cooperate with House Democrats. “I think the committee is a joke,” he said. “It’s the McCarthy committee on steroids. There’s no sensitivity to civil rights.”
The White House letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Schiff and other Democrats was part constitutional argument, part political statement. Over eight pages, Mr. Cipollone listed various ways House Democrats have diverged from precedents set during impeachment inquiries against Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton.
Among other things, both of those inquiries were authorized by a vote of the full House, while Ms. Pelosi has opted against holding such a vote that might expose some of her more endangered members and instead simply declared by her own fiat that an impeachment inquiry was underway.
As a result, Mr. Cipollone noted, the minority Republicans did not have subpoena power to call their own witnesses. He also noted that the president’s lawyers were not allowed to participate in the questioning of witnesses, which so far has been taking place behind closed doors rather than in open session.
“Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away,” Mr. Cipollone wrote.
While Mr. Cipollone was correct that in some ways Ms. Pelosi is handling impeachment differently than her Nixon and Clinton-era predecessors, it is not clear that she has any constitutional obligation to follow those precedents. The Constitution says that the House “shall have the sole power of impeachment,” but provides no process or rules, meaning each House that has considered it has proceeded as it chose to.
For her part, Ms. Pelosi preferred on Tuesday to focus on another precedent that she might follow. One of the three article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against Mr. Nixon in 1974 charged him with high crimes for failing to provide information during the inquiry.
Ms. Pelosi was not ready to say whether she will follow suit, but left the door open. “The president is obstructing Congress from getting the facts that we need,” she told reporters in Seattle, where she was holding an unrelated event. “It is an abuse of power for him to act in this way.”
Even before the White House released its letter, Mr. Trump signaled his defiance on Tuesday, ridiculing the inquiry as spurious.
“I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify,” the president wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning around the time Mr. Sondland was to appear, “but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away.”
[Catch up on all the day’s news here.][Catch up on all the day’s news here.]
Earlier on Tuesday, House Democrats said they would regard the president’s stance as obstruction. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration’s refusal to allow Mr. Sondland to appear was “strong evidence” of “obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress, a coequal branch of government.” The decision to block Mr. 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. Mr. Sondland’s lawyers told House staff members that a State Department official left a voice mail message at 12:30 a.m. directing him not to appear.
Mr. Schiff told reporters that the State Department was also withholding text messages Mr. 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. Mr. Schiff told reporters that the State Department was also withholding text messages Mr. Sondland had sent on a private device that were “deeply relevant” to the inquiry. By the end of the day, House leaders issued a subpoena ordering Mr. Sondland to appear next Wednesday and turn over documents before then.
“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,” Mr. 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.” Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and contributor to Mr. Trump’s campaign, has become a central figure in the saga of the president’s efforts to seek political help from Ukraine. Although Ukraine is not in the European Union, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Sondland to take a lead in his administration’s dealings with the country.
The decision to block Mr. 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. Mr. Sondland interacted directly with Mr. Trump, speaking with the president several times around key moments that House Democrats are now investigating, including before and after Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The president asked Mr. Zelensky in that conversation to “do us “a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and conspiracy theories about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.
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. Text messages provided to Congress last week showed that Mr. Sondland and another senior diplomat worked with Mr. Giuliani on language for a statement for the Ukrainian president to put out in August that would have committed him to the investigations sought by Mr. Trump. The statement was seen as critical to getting Mr. Trump to agree to a coveted White House visit sought by Mr. Zelensky.
The strategy, if it holds, carries substantial risk to the White House. Privately, some Republicans had urged the White House to allow witnesses like Mr. 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 Mr. Trump has something to hide. The texts also showed that the top American diplomat based in Ukraine believed that Mr. Trump was holding up $391 million in security aid as leverage for persuading Ukraine to conduct the investigations Mr. Trump wanted.
Mr. Schiff said the Intelligence Committee, working with both the Foreign Affairs and the Oversight and Reform panels, would continue its work regardless. But beyond issuing a subpoena for Mr. Sondland, the chairman did not detail how he might seek to crank up pressure on the White House to comply, and the standoff may create a quandary for Democrats who had hoped to move quickly in extracting crucial evidence and decide in short order whether to push forward on impeaching Mr. Trump. “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” William B. Taylor Jr., the diplomat, wrote in early September.
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,” Ms. 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.”
Mr. Sondland has become enmeshed in the burgeoning saga of how the president sought to push the Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his son and Democrats. Although Ukraine is not in the European Union, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. 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.
Mr. Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill rushed to his defense on Tuesday and condemned Mr. Schiff and the Democrats for running what they described as an unfair process, though they made clear they thought Mr. Sondland would have been a helpful witness for the president’s case.
“We were looking forward to hearing from Ambassador Sondland,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight and Reform Committee, adding that Republicans believed Mr. Sondland would “reinforce exactly” what lawmakers and aides heard least week from Kurt D. Volker, the former American special envoy to Ukraine. Mr. 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 …,’ ” Mr. Jordan added.
And in the Senate, Mr. Trump’s allies shifted into high gear to orchestrate a counteroffensive on his behalf. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would invite Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer who was deeply involved in the pressure campaign on Ukraine, to testify before his panel. Mr. 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,” Mr. Graham said.
Democrats did not flinch at the suggestion, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, Mr. 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.”
It was unclear what the Trump administration’s position would mean for other witnesses expected to testify in the House investigation. Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, is currently scheduled to appear on Friday. The State Department has also missed a subpoena deadline to hand over documents the House has demanded related to Ukraine.
Mr. Sondland interacted directly with Mr. Trump, speaking with the president several times around key moments that House Democrats are now investigating, including before and after Mr. Trump’s July call with Mr. Zelensky. The president asked Mr. Zelensky in that conversation to do him “a favor” and investigate the Bidens and matters related to 2016.
Text messages provided to Congress last week showed that Mr. Sondland and another senior diplomat had worked on language for a statement they wanted the Ukrainian president to put out in August that would have committed him to the investigations sought by Mr. Trump. The diplomats consulted with Mr. Giuliani about the statement, believing they needed to pacify him in order to allow the United States to normalize relations with the Ukrainians.
Mr. Sondland was also involved in a back-and-forth with top American diplomats to Ukraine over text last month that suggests some senior State Department officials believed that Mr. Trump may have been holding up the security aid as leverage for getting its leaders to conduct the investigations Mr. Trump wanted.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” William B. Taylor Jr., a top American official in Ukraine, wrote in one exchange in early September.
After receiving the text, Mr. Sondland called Mr. Trump, who asserted it was false.After receiving the text, Mr. Sondland called Mr. Trump, who asserted it was false.
“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions,” Mr. Sondland wrote in the messages. “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions,” Mr. Sondland wrote in the messages. “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”
Mr. Sondland added: “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” Mr. Sondland added, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.”
There have been conflicting accounts of Mr. Sondland’s views, however. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, told The Wall Street Journal last week that Mr. Sondland had told him in August that the release of the aid was contingent upon Ukraine opening the investigations. Mr. Johnson said he was alarmed and asked Mr. Trump if there was a quid pro quo involved. The president adamantly denied it, he said. There have been conflicting accounts of Mr. Sondland’s views, however. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, told The Wall Street Journal last week that Mr. Sondland told him in August that the release of the aid was contingent upon Ukraine opening the investigations. Mr. Johnson said he was alarmed and asked Mr. Trump if there was a quid pro quo involved. The president adamantly denied it, he said.
Robert D. Luskin, Mr. Sondland’s lawyer, said in a statement that as a State Department employee, his client had no choice but to comply with the administration’s direction. He said Mr. Sondland was “profoundly disappointed” he was not able to testify, and would do so in the future if allowed.Robert D. Luskin, Mr. Sondland’s lawyer, said in a statement that as a State Department employee, his client had no choice but to comply with the administration’s direction. He said Mr. Sondland was “profoundly disappointed” he was not able to testify, and would do so in the future if allowed.
Mr. Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill condemned Mr. Schiff for running what they described as an unfair process, but made clear they believed Mr. Sondland would have been a helpful witness for the president.
“We were looking forward to hearing from Ambassador Sondland,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight and Reform Committee.
“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 …’” Mr. Jordan added.