The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday to turn over documents related to the Bidens and Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The subpoena issued by Rep. Eliot Engel demands the top US diplomat provide “all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings the department has produced to Republican-led Senate committees” as well as “internal State Department correspondence about responding to Congress.”
The subpoena requires documents be turned over by August 7.
A State Department spokesperson claimed the department had a history of accommodating Engel’s “legitimate investigative requests” and accused him of “(ceding) the Committee and its oversight duties to his misguided staff.”
“The Department previously addressed Chairman Engel’s staff’s requests for ‘courtesy copies’ of documents produced in response to investigative requests from the Chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, as well as their inaccurate assertion that complying with this request would be ‘consistent with longstanding State Department practice,’” the spokesperson said in a statement.
However, the spokesperson said it is not common practice for the State Department to turn over copies of documents to a congressional committee that it produces in response to requests from a separate committee.
“While the Department has worked in good faith with Chairman Engel on other matters, it has become clear that in his final months as a Member of Congress, the Chairman has ceded the Committee and its oversight duties to his misguided staff,” the spokesperson added.
Congressional Democrats have criticized the State Department for stonewalling their requests while complying with Republican ones.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa have sought a host of records as part of their investigations involving former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son’s work at the Ukrainian energy company.
President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the former vice president and his son acted corruptly in Ukraine.
According to a statement from the House Foreign Affairs committee, it “learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February.”
During an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, Pompeo committed to Johnson that the State Department would “do our best to be responsive” to his and Grassley’s document requests.
In a statement Friday, Engel slammed Pompeo, saying he “has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he’s not even trying to disguise it.
“After trying to stonewall virtually every oversight effort by the Foreign Affairs Committee in the last two years, Mr. Pompeo is more than happy to help Senate Republicans advance their conspiracy theories about the Bidens. I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too,” the New York Democrat said.
