The embattled head of Steward Health Care told lawmakers he is invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and will not comply with a congressional subpoena.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee and shared first with The Hill, the attorney for Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre said last week’s congressional hearing “was seemingly designed as a vehicle to violate Dr. de la Torre’s constitutional rights,” so he is invoking his Fifth Amendment right to refuse any additional requests to testify.
The letter was sent a day before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is set to vote on contempt of Congress charges after de la Torre defied a subpoena and failed to attend last Thursday’s Senate hearing.
The committee will vote Thursday to adopt two resolutions: One for civil enforcement and another that would refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena.
If passed by the committee, both resolutions will be advanced to the full Senate for a vote. Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor, and it could lead to fines or imprisonment.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate HELP Committee — said de la Torre needs to answer questions about how Steward managed its hospitals, as well as how he was able to reap millions of dollars even as the system was failing.
“We were hopeful that Dr. de la Torre would comply with our bipartisan subpoena and appear before the committee, to testify to the harm Steward has caused to patients, health care workers, and the communities in which they live,” Cassidy and Sanders said in a joint statement last week announcing the vote. “Unfortunately, he failed to appear.”
The senators in a joint statement late Wednesday said the Fifth Amendment “does not permit a witness to refuse to appear when summoned to testify before a congressional committee. ”
Witnesses must show up to the hearing in response to the subpoena and assert their rights in response to specific questions, they said, and the committee will move forward with the contempt vote.
“Patients have suffered. They deserve answers,” Sanders and Cassidy said.
In Wednesday’s letter, de la Torre’s attorney said his client was being set up as “a criminal scapegoat for the systemic failures in Massachusetts’ health care system,” and that the purpose of the hearing “was not to gather facts … but instead a pseudo-criminal proceeding with the goal of convicting Dr. de la Torre in a court of public opinion.”
The HELP committee in July issued a subpoena to compel de la Torre to testify about the failure of Steward Health Care. The committee voted on a strong bipartisan basis, 16-4, to authorize the subpoena — the first issued by the panel in decades.
De la Torre last week told the committee he wouldn’t participate in the hearing while Steward was still in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings and asked for the hearing to be postponed.
Steward filed for bankruptcy in May and has been trying to sell all 30 of its hospitals across eight states.
“If the Committee had any concern for the hospitals affected by Steward’s bankruptcy proceedings it would, consistent with Dr. de la Torre’s request to postpone the hearing for a more appropriate time, permit the bankruptcy resolution to move forward,” the letter stated.
Updated at 7:34 p.m. EDT