House Republicans have demanded testimony from Hunter Biden, the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower and a long list of other witnesses in the President Trump impeachment hearings set to start Wednesday.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has unilateral power to deny the GOP’s witness wishes, said he was “evaluating” the Republicans’ list.
“This inquiry is not and will not serve, however, as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the president pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit,” Schiff added.
The GOP’s witness list spotlights Trump’s allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter made illicit profits in Ukraine thanks to his father’s position.
It also calls attention to Trump’s accusations of Democratic dirty tricks during the 2016 presidential election, with the inclusion of figures like researcher Nellie Ohr, who was hired by a Clinton campaign contractor to investigate Trump, and Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic National Committee consultant with ties to Ukraine.
Under the rules approved on a party-line vote Oct. 31, all GOP witnesses must be approved by Schiff. But his blanket denial could heighten public criticism of a process that Republicans have called unjust.
“To provide transparency to your otherwise opaque and unfair process … the American people deserve to hear from the following witnesses in an open setting,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) wrote in a letter to Schiff on Saturday.
Nunes has also demanded Schiff’s own testimony in a closed-door hearing to determine whether the congressman collaborated with the whistleblower in the Ukraine case.
Meanwhile, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, is trying to make the courts take sides in a lawsuit over Schiff’s Intelligence Committee subpoenas.
In the suit, White House deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman had asked the US District Court for the District of Columbia to rule on whether he must testify to Congress, even though the White House had told him not to appear.
It was feared that Kupperman could corroborate elements in the Ukraine case. Mulvaney hopes to block it.
A Trump victory in the case could head off Democrats’ plans to charge Trump with obstruction of justice in their expected articles of impeachment.
The direct clash between two equal branches of government, Kupperman said, had to be resolved by the court.
Democrats withdrew Kupperman’s subpoena Wednesday, potentially making his case moot — and apparently revealing their reluctance to test it before the judicial branch.
Trump on Saturday promised to release in the coming days the text of another phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.