Engel Demands All Documents Produced to Republican-Led Senate Committees
Washington—Representative Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, today issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as part of the committee’s investigation of his apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear of former Vice President Joe Biden. The subpoena demands all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings the department has produced to Republican-led Senate committees. Despite delivering Republican Senate chairmen thousands of pages of records, the Department of State has refused Chairman Engel’s request to provide duplicates to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In addition, Chairman Engel’s subpoena seeks internal State Department correspondence about responding to Congress.
“Secretary Pompeo 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,” said Chairman Engel.
Beginning in November 2019, the Senate Committees on Finance and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs began requesting documents related to Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden. Just days after the conclusion of President Trump’s impeachment trial, in which Secretary Pompeo refused to comply with a duly authorized subpoena for documents and attempted to block testimony of key witnesses, the State Department producing documents to Senate Republicans to help advance a political smear of Vice President Biden. The Foreign Affairs Committee has learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February. Yesterday, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Secretary Pompeo committed to continuing to send information to Senate Republicans. But Secretary Pompeo has refused to provide the same information to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the State Department.
The subpoena, directed to Secretary Pompeo, requires that the records be turned over by August 7, 2020.
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