House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, demanding reams of documents that the State Department has already provided to Senate Republicans who are seeking damaging information about Vice President Joe Biden.
Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have been probing long-discredited allegations that Biden abused his position to help his son avoid a Ukrainian investigation.
In so doing, the State Department under Pompeo has replied promptly to the Senate GOPers requests for documents and information.
Engel, in the subpoena, is demanding copies of the documents that Pompeo provided to the Senate, as well as “internal State Department correspondence about responding to Congress.”
In a statement, Engel accused Pompeo of turning 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,” Engel said. “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.”
Democratic leadership has raised alarm bells over foreign disinformation efforts targeting Congress, claiming that the Johnson-Grassley probe has become a vehicle for Ukrainians to launder disinformation into the U.S. political system.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) refused on Wednesday to say whether he had taken documents from a Ukrainian peddling damaging, unsubstantiated claims against the Democratic candidate.
