US House Committee summons Hope Hicks, 2 Trump aides
http://www.hrlnews.com/2019/05/us-house-committee-summons-hope-hicks-2.html
A U.S. House committee chairman on Tuesday subpoenaed two more former
White House aides, including former model Hope Hicks, just hours after
former White House Counsel Donald McGahn snubbed the panel at President
Donald Trump’s request.
As tensions rose between the Republican president and the Democrats
who control the House of Representatives, lawmakers also negotiated for
future testimony by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on his Russia
investigation and debated whether to launch high-stakes impeachment
proceedings against Trump.
The showdown between Trump and the Democrats intensified after
McGahn, heeding Trump’s instructions, ignored a subpoena from the
Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee and did not show up to testify
before the panel.
Undeterred in a growing conflict with Trump over congressional powers
to oversee his administration, committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler
announced he had issued fresh subpoenas to Hicks, the former White House
communications director, and to Annie Donaldson, McGahn’s former chief
of staff.
The subpoenas seek testimony and documents in connection with the
committee’s probe of whether the president obstructed Mueller’s inquiry
into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and contacts between
Trump’s campaign team and Moscow.
Despite McGahn’s absence, the committee held a hearing lasting about a
half-hour that featured an empty chair at the witness table. Nadler
said at the hearing, “Let me be clear: this committee will hear Mr.
McGahn’s testimony, even if we have to go to court to secure it.”
In Mueller’s investigative report, McGahn was a key witness regarding
possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Career prosecutors not
involved in the case have said the report contained strong evidence that
Trump committed a crime when he pressured McGahn to fire Mueller and
later urged him to lie about it.
Attorney General William Barr, the top U.S. law enforcement official
and a Trump appointee, on May 2 snubbed the same committee, which later
voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for not handing over a full,
unredacted Mueller report.
At the hearing skipped by Barr, an empty chair also figured
prominently and a Democratic committee member placed a ceramic chicken
on the table in front of it for the cameras. The ceramic chicken did not
make a repeat appearance on Tuesday.
After the hearing that McGahn skipped, several Democrats said the
Judiciary Committee was negotiating with Mueller about his possible
testimony. A redacted version of Mueller’s report was released by Barr
last month.
“We are working with his team on that right now. I can’t tell you for
sure if he’s going to come,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democratic
committee member.
Republicans derided Tuesday’s session as a political stunt.
“This is becoming a regular event. It’s called the circus of Judiciary,” said the panel’s top Republican, Doug Collins.
Trump, seeking re-election in 2020, is refusing to cooperate with
many congressional probes into his administration, his family and his
business interests.
In the early days of Trump’s presidency, few aides had more frequent
access to him than Hicks, a former model and public relations consultant
hired by Trump into the White House from his daughter Ivanka Trump’s
staff. She rose to communications director, but resigned from the White
House in March 2018.
Any impeachment effort would begin in the House, led by the Judiciary
Committee, before action in the Republican-led Senate on whether to
remove Trump from office.
No U.S. president has ever been removed from office through impeachment, a process spelled out in the Constitution.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, who is locked in
another legal battle with Trump over access to his financial records,
told reporters Democrats are “moving more and more” toward using
impeachment as an option in the showdown with Trump.
Taking it a step further, Democratic Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez told reporters: “It’s time for us to, at the very least,
open an impeachment inquiry.”
Other Democrats remained cautious, saying a federal judge’s decision
against Trump on Monday in a subpoena case shows a step-by-step approach
in the courts can bring results.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington blocked a lawsuit by
Trump that attempted to quash a subpoena sent by Cummings to Trump’s
long-time accounting firm Mazars LLP seeking the president’s financial
records. Trump has appealed the case.
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