House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) issued a memo on Wednesday threatening to subpoena the White House Friday if the Trump Administration does not comply with requests for documents pertinent to the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s actions.
“I do not take this step lightly,” Cummings wrote. “Over the past several weeks, the committees tried several times to obtain voluntary compliance with our requests for documents, but the White House has refused to engage with — or even respond to — the committees.”
The move comes as Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) will take part in House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s weekly Wednesday morning press conference. In the afternoon, Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general, is expected to give an “urgent” brief to congressional staffers from several committees about documents obtained from the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser related to the State Department and Ukraine, per ABC News.
Two subpoenas have already been issued by the House: one to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which Pompeo has vowed to fight, and one to Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.