Page:20191203 - full report hpsci impeachment inquiry - 20191203.pdf/222

 On September 27, the Committees sent a letter to Secretary Pompeo conveying a subpoena for documents issued by Rep. Eliot Engel, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, compelling the production of documents by October 4.151

Since Secretary Pompeo had failed to respond, the Committees also sent separate letters to six individual State Department employees seeking documents in their possession and requesting that they participate in depositions with the Committees.152

On October 1, Secretary Pompeo responded to the Committees for the first time. He objected to the Committees seeking documents directly from State Department employees after he failed to produce them, claiming inaccurately that such a request was “an act of intimidation and an invitation to violate federal records laws.”153 He also claimed that the Committees’ inquiry was “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”154

To the contrary, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, one of the State Department professionals from whom the Committees sought documents and testimony, testified that he “had not felt bullied, threatened, and intimidated.”155 Rather, Mr. Kent said that the language in Secretary Pompeo’s letter, which had been drafted by a State Department attorney without consulting Mr. Kent, “was inaccurate.”156 Mr. Kent explained that, when he raised this concern, the State Department attorney “spent the next 5 minutes glaring at me” and then “got very angry.” According to Mr. Kent, the official “started pointing at me with a clenched jaw and saying, What you did in there, if Congress knew what you were doing, they could say that you were trying to sort of control, or change the process of collecting documents.”157 With respect to his own compliance with the subpoena for documents, Secretary Pompeo wrote that he “intends to respond to that subpoena by the noticed return date of October 4, 2019.”158

Later on October 1, the Committees sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan in light of new evidence that Secretary Pompeo participated on President Trump’s call with President Zelensky on July 25. The Committees wrote:


 * We are writing to you because Secretary Pompeo now appears to have an obvious conflict of interest. He reportedly participated personally in the July 25, 2019 call, in which President Donald Trump pressed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate the son of former Vice President Joseph Biden immediately after the Ukrainian President raised his desire for United States military assistance to counter Russian aggression.


 * If true, Secretary Pompeo is now a fact witness in the impeachment inquiry. He should not be making any decisions regarding witness testimony or document production in order to protect himself or the President. Any effort by the Secretary or the Department to intimidate or prevent witnesses from testifying or withhold documents from the Committees shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.159