Democratic chairman subpoenas Pompeo for records related to Biden, Burisma
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) issued a subpoena Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanding tens of thousands of documents that the State Department provided to Senate Republicans as part of their investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Engel accused Pompeo of using State Department resources to advance a smear campaign against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and demanded documents provided to GOP senators be made available to House Democrats.
“Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he’s not even trying to disguise it,” Engel said in a statement. “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 House committee is looking to obtain 16,080 pages of documents the State Department provided Senate Republicans related to the former vice president, Hunter Biden and dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
The committee has given Pompeo until Aug. 7 to comply with the request.
The documents are related to a Senate GOP probe involving the upper chamber’s Finance Committee and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee focused on a widely discredited narrative that during the Obama administration Biden tried to remove Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to prevent an investigation into Burisma and his son’s role at the company.
Shokin was dismissed from his position in 2016 over allegations of corruption, which included criticism that he failed to fulfill duties of investigations into companies like Burisma to certify they were complying with the law.
The Senate probe is seen by Democrats as a response to the House impeachment of President Trump last year after the president withheld aid to Ukraine and pressed Ukrainian leaders to open two investigations that might have helped him politically: one into Hunter Biden, the other into Joe Biden.
The president was acquitted of the impeachment charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — in February after a Senate trial.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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