Democrats request Pence documents on Ukraine contacts

WASHINGTON
(AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he will formally object to
Congress’ impeachment inquiry even as he acknowledged that House
Democrats “have the votes” to proceed.

The White House was
expected to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arguing that
Congress cannot conduct an impeachment investigation without first
having a vote to authorize it. The letter was expected to say the
administration won’t cooperate with the probe without that vote.

Trump said the resolution would likely pass, but he predicted it would backfire on Democrats.

“I really believe that they’re going to pay a tremendous price at the polls,” he said.

Trump’s
comments came shortly before the Democrats sent an extensive request
for documents from Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with
Ukraine. Lawmakers have made Trump’s request for Ukraine to launch an
investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden the centerpiece of the
probe, as they investigate a whistleblower complaint that Trump sought
to use military assistance for Ukraine to push President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy to investigate the 2020 Democratic hopeful.

The West
Wing was set to allow a similar request for documents from the
president’s staff to go unfulfilled Friday, likely forcing Democrats to
make good on their threat to issue a subpoena for the records.

When
Pelosi announced that the House was initiating the inquiry, she didn’t
seek the consent of the full chamber, as was done for impeachment
investigations into former Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

But it is underway, and with a rapidly escalating pace. Late Thursday, House investigators released a cache of text messages
that showed top U.S. diplomats encouraging Ukraine’s newly elected
president to conduct an investigation linked to Biden’s family in return
for a high-profile visit with Trump in Washington.

The release
followed a 10-hour interview with one of the diplomats, Kurt Volker, who
stepped down as special envoy to Ukraine after the impeachment inquiry
had begun.

Trump repeated on Friday that he was pressing Ukraine
to investigate corruption, not trying to undermine Biden, who could be
his 2020 presidential election opponent. He made a related request of China, specifying Biden and his son, on Thursday.

As
Republicans search for a response to the investigation, the absence of a
procedural vote to begin the probe has been a main attack line against
Democrats.

Pelosi swatted the need for such a vote back as
unnecessary, saying the House is well within its rules to pursue the
inquiry without it.

“The existing rules of the House provide House
Committees with full authority to conduct investigations for all
matters under their jurisdiction, including impeachment investigations,”
Pelosi wrote Thursday in a letter to House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy
after he, too, pressed for a floor vote.

Pelosi has sought to
avoid a vote on the impeachment probe for the same reason she resisted,
for months, liberal calls to try to remove the president: It would force
moderate House Democrats to make a politically risky vote.

The
White House, meanwhile, is trying to force the question on Democrats, as
it seeks to raise the political cost for their impeachment
investigation and to animate the president’s supporters ahead of the
2020 election.

Trump allies have suggested that without a formal
vote, the House is merely conducting standard oversight, entitling
lawmakers to a lesser level of disclosure from the administration. The
Justice Department raised similar arguments last month, though that was
before Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation.

Two days
after telling reporters, “Well, I always cooperate,” Trump struck a
different note on cooperating with the House probe. “I don’t know,” he
said. “That’s up to the lawyers.”

Democrats have warned that the
Trump administration’s obstruction of the investigation is itself a
potentially impeachable office. The administration was expected to miss
various deadlines Friday to comply with House investigators’ requests
for documents.

There’s no clear-cut procedure in the Constitution
for initiating an impeachment inquiry, leaving many questions about
possible presidential obstruction untested in court, said Allan
Lichtman, a history professor at American University.

“There’s no
specification in the Constitution in what does and does not constitute a
more formal impeachment inquiry or investigation,” he said.

Rudy
Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, dismissed the entire
premise of the impeachment inquiry, which is centered on Trump asking
Ukraine to investigate his possible political rival, Democratic former
Vice President Biden.

“The president was not tasking Ukraine to
investigate a political opponent,” Giuliani told The Associated Press on
Thursday. “He wanted an investigation into a seriously conflicted
former vice president of the United States who damaged the reputation of
the United States in Ukraine.”

Democrats have sought to use their
declared impeachment investigation to bolster their case to access all
sorts of documents from the administration, most recently secret grand
jury information that underpinned special counsel Robert Mueller’s
report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. They have also
threatened to use the administration’s refusal to turn over documents
and make witnesses available to potentially form an article of
impeachment over obstruction of the congressional inquiry.

Where
courts have generally required congressional oversight requests to
demonstrate a legitimate legislative purpose, impeachment requests could
be wide-ranging.

It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a
lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony
— or if they would just move straight to considering articles of
impeachment.

___

Lemire reported from New York. AP writers Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro and Mark Sherman contributed.