On Monday, the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani as part of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump’s alleged attempt to “pressure” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “interfere” in the 2020 election by investigating former Vice President and current Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
In a letter signed by House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-NY), and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and posted on the House Oversight Committee’s official website Monday, Giuliani is ordered to produce information by Oct. 15 related the Democrats’ Ukraine investigation.
“Pursuant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, we are hereby transmitting a subpoena that compels you to produce the documents set fort in the in the accompanying schedule by October 15, 2019,” the letter begins.
“This subpoena is being issued by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under the Rules of the House of Representatives in exercise of its oversight and legislative jurisdiction and after consultation with the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform,” it continues. “The subpoenaed documents shall be collected as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate. Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the President or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the President.”
“The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters,” the letter continues, with increasingly loaded language.
“Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the President in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the Office of the President. A growing public record, including your own statements, indicate that the President, you, and others appear to have pressed the Ukrainian government to pursue two politically -motivated investigations. The first is a prosecution of Ukrainians who provided evidence against Mr. Trump’s convicted campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The second relates to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is challenging President Trump for the presidency in 2020.
“For example, on September 19, 2019, you admitted on national television that you personally asked the government of Ukraine to target Vice President Biden. During an interview on CNN, Chris Cuomo asked you, ‘Sir, you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?’ You responded, ‘Of course I did.’ In addition to this stark admission, you stated more recently that you are in possession of evidence—in the form of text messages, phone records, and other communications—indicating that you were not acting along and that other Trump Administration officials may have been involved in this scheme. The subpoena requires you to produce all of those communications, and other related documents, to the Commmittees in order to determine the full extent of this effort by the President and his Administration to press Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election.”
The letter concludes by ordering Giuliani to contact staff for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence “to arrange for the production of documents.”
Though Democrats are accusing Trump of trying to “cover up” his July 25 call to his Ukrainian counterpart, which Trump has repeatedly defended as a “perfect” call, Trump authorized release of the transcript of the call last week. In the call, Trump asked Zelensky to “look into” the alleged corruption scandal involving the Ukraine-based company Burisma Holdings that hired Hunter Biden just weeks after his father was appointed by then-President Barack Obama to oversee Ukraine-U.S. relations. Biden eventually used the threat of withholding $1 billion in aid to Ukraine to force the removal of the country’s top prosecutor, who had been investigating Burisma for alleged corruption.
“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, and that’s really unfair,” Trump told Zelensky, according to the transcript of the call. “A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”
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