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State Dept Inspector General Calls For ‘Urgent’ Briefing With Congress Over Ukraine Inquiry

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Oct 2, 2019 DailyWire.com

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FBI Director Comey Testifies To House Committee On FBI Recommendation Not To Prosecute Clinton Over Private Email Server — Alex Wong/Getty Images)

With the House Democrats furiously churning out subpoenas and scheduling depositions, the State Department’s inspector general sent a “highly unusual” request for an “urgent” closed-door briefing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon on the issue at the center of the impeachment push: Ukraine.

“The State Department inspector general and two former state officials agreed to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told House Democrats on Tuesday that State Department officials scheduled to appear this week for depositions before committees conducting the impeachment inquiry would not show up,” according to The Washington Post, which was first to report on State Department Inspector General Steve Linick’s request.

Citing an unnamed person familiar with the briefing, CNN reports that Linick plans to “provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine” at the “urgent” meeting Wednesday. A congressional aide described the request as “highly unusual and cryptically worded,” according to the network.

“The inspector general said the reason for the briefing was the office had obtained documents from acting legal adviser in the State Department,” CNN reports.

Axios reports that Linick plans to meet with the following eight committees:

House Foreign Affairs
Senate Foreign Relations
House Appropriations
Senate Appropriations
House Oversight
Senate Homeland Security
House Intelligence
Senate Intelligence

Inspector General Linick’s “urgent” request came a few hours after Pompeo publicly acknowledged for the first time that he was on the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A whistleblower complaint has framed the call as Trump “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” particularly by “pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”

“I was on the phone call,” Pompeo said at a press conference in Rome, Italy, on Wednesday. Asked if anything Trump said on the call raised any red flags, Pompeo responded by defending the administration’s “remarkably consistent” approach to Ukraine-U.S. relations and warning Democrats against trying to “intimidate” his staff.

“It’s what our team, including Ambassador (Kurt) Volker, were focused on was taking down the threat that Russia poses there in Ukraine,” Pompeo said, in comments reported by CNN. “It was about helping the Ukrainians to get graft out and corruption outside of their government and to help now this new government in the Ukraine build a successful thriving economy. It’s what the State Department officials that I’ve had the privilege to lead have been engaged in. And it’s what we will continue to do. Even while all this noise is going on.”

While Pompeo said his department would do its “constitutional duty” to cooperate with Congress, he added: “But we are going to do so in a way that is consistent with the fundamental values of the American system — and we won’t tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying, intimidating State Department employees.”

The Democrats’ impeachment effort centers around Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to “look into” an alleged corruption scandal involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, and that’s really unfair,” Trump told Zelensky. “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.”

UPDATE: Dems Went Into ‘Urgent’ Meeting Expecting Impeachment Evidence, Left With ‘Propaganda’ About Dems’ Collusion With Ukraine

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