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Democrats Pressure Republican Senate to Join Ukraine Inquiry – The New York Times, The New York Times

Democrats Pressure Republican Senate to Join Ukraine Inquiry – The New York Times, The New York Times


They said a failure by the administration to disclose a complaint about President Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine would be considered obstruction.

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CreditCreditDoug Mills / The New York Times

Nicholas Fandos

WASHINGTON – Democrats moved assertively on Monday to increase political pressure on the White House and congressional Republicans to furnish documentation about explosive allegations that President Trump sought to pressure the Ukrainian president to help produce damaging information on a leading political rival.

In the House, where the revelations about a conversation between Mr. Trump and the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, were fueling new calls for impeachment, the chairmen of three committees investigating the matter threatened to issue subpoenas in the coming days if the administration did not hand over a transcript of the call and a related whistle-blower complaint.

Mr. Trumpacknowledged on Sundaythat he had leveled allegations of corruption against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Mr. Zelensky, but on Monday, he denied that he had pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate and used a package of hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid as leverage. Mr. Trump has defended the conversation as entirely appropriate.

Still, Democrats are demanding to see evidence. On Monday, they said a failure by the administration to disclose a complaint about Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Trump’s Zelensky would be considered obstruction, an indication that they could consider it as grounds for impeachment.

“If press reports are accurate, such corrupt use of presidential power for the president’s personal political interest – and not for the national interest – is a betrayal of the president’s oath of office and cannot go unchecked,” the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform Committees wrote on Monday in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

They added, “By withholding these documents and refusing to engage with the committees, the Trump administration is obstructing Congress’ oversight duty under the Constitution to protect our nation’s democratic process. ”

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, meanwhile, warned that Republicans would be complicit in Mr. Trump’s actions if they failed to join in those requests and issue a subpoena from their chamber for a secretive whistle-blower complaint that is said to be related, at least in part, to the call between the two leaders.

“This is a whistle-blower complaint that has been labeled ‘urgent’ and ‘credible’ not by Democrats, but by a senior-level Trump appointee,” Mr. Schumer wrote. “It is the Senate’s duty to take this national security matter seriously and to take action now.”

It appeared increasingly likely that the brewing conflict would come to a head on Thursday, when the House Intelligence Committee was already scheduled to question the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, who has withheld the whistle-blower complaint. The panel has demanded Mr. Maguire bring with him a copy of it. Now, lawmakers also want a decision by Mr. Pompeo by that day on whether he will furnish a transcript of the presidential conversation, as well as other materials they have requested.

A growing number of House Democrats said on Monday that their willingness to support impeachment would most likely hinge on whether those demands were met.

After months of debate over impeachment, the latest allegations against Mr. Trump appeared to be shifting the political ground for Democrats, persuading some lawmakers to drop their reluctance to pursue formal charges against the president.

“ This is a game-changer, ”said Representative Katie Hill, Democrat of California, who won a Republican seat last fall, adding that if Democrats can get a transcript or testimony that confirms Mr. Trump’s own account of his conversation with Mr. Zelensky, “then I don’t see any choice but to impeach.”

“It has moved things up, and this has also made it that it’s an imminent national security danger, and it demonstrates very clearly in and of itself enough to move straight to impeachment, ”Ms. Hill said. “I don’t think we need to wait for anything else. This alone should be impeachable. ”

Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, another freshman Democrat, laid down a similar line. “If the reports are corroborated,” he said Monday in a statement, “we must pursue articles of impeachment and report them to the full House of Representatives for immediate consideration.”

Other more medium freshmen who have been reluctant to embrace the idea of ​​impeachment spent the day furiously placing calls to calibrate the right response. Several of them said privately that they were on the brink of supporting an impeachment process, but that they wanted to first see what transpired on Thursday.

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(CreditAnna Moneymaker / The New York Times

Republicans, for their part, have been mostly unmoved by the new allegations, with Mr. Trump’s closest allies actively maintaining his innocence.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday afternoon, Mr. McConnell accused Democrats of trying to exploit a serious issue for political gain and said he had confidence that the Senate’s intelligence panel, working quietly on a bipartisan basis, would handle it appropriately.

“It is regrettable that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff and Senator Schumer have chosen to politicize this issue, circumventing the established procedures and protocols that exist so the committees can pursue sensitive matters in the appropriate, deliberate,

Though he did not discuss possible reasons for it being withheld, Mr. Bipartisan manner, ”he said. McConnell also made clear that he had opposed the White House’s initial decision not to release the aid money for Ukraine andworked to get it reinstated.

Over the weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it would be “good for the country” if the president could share more information about his interactions with Ukraine. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was harsher.

“If the president asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme, ”he said.

Despite Mr. Schumer’s demands, most attention on Monday remained on the House, where Democrats hold the majority and the power to impeach Mr. Trump, and are already pursuing an investigation to determine whether they should do so over his attempts to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. A crucial element of any potential case against the president, lawmakers have said, would be his stonewalling of congressional attempts to investigate him and his administration.

In the short term, even the House has relatively few options if the administration maintains its refusal to share information with Congress.

The hearing by the House Intelligence Committee, which first learned of and publicized the existence of the whistle-blower complaint, will provide lawmakers with a chance to press Mr. Maguire on why he declined to share it, despite a request to do so from the intelligence agencies ’internal watchdog. But Mr. Maguire has been instructed by the Justice Department and the White House not to produce the material.

The House could sue to try to force disclosure under its interpretation of the whistle-blower law, but as with other legal challenges to the White House’s stonewalling, the courts could take more than a year to sort the case out, a nonstarter for Democrats who fear there may be an ongoing threat to national security.

Additional pressure from the Republican Senate could conceivably lead the White House to reconsider and share more information on the complaint or the president’s interactions with Ukrainian leaders. And some strategists believe that Democrats must do more to force Republicans to weigh in on the latest allegations against Mr. Trump, potentially angering their constituents by appearing to condone a brazen attempt to enlist foreign help to sway the election in his own favor.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.

********* ImpeachmentTrump and Ukraine.

Nicholas Fandos is a reporter in the Washington bureau covering Congress.@npfandos

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