(Bloomberg) -- Two leading House Democrats lashed out at the Trump administration Thursday for refusing to cooperate in their investigations, as the White House continues to block several inquiries that involve President Donald Trump.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said the Justice Department ignored a subpoena for “counterintelligence and foreign intelligence” material uncovered in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Separately, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler on Thursday delivered an angry response to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s assertion that his committee has no right to documents related to other aspects of the Mueller investigation.
"As a threshold matter, your failure to comprehend the gravity of the special counsel’s findings is astounding and dangerous," Nadler said of assertions by Cipollone that the committee should end its investigation into obstruction of justice, public corruption and abuses of power.
There was no immediate response from the White House on Nadler’s letter.
Document Subpoena
Cipollone informed the committee Wednesday that the White House would not comply with an April 18 congressional subpoena and other requests because its demands are too broad and violate principles of executive privilege.
In that letter, Cipollone also accused Nadler, a New York Democrat, of seeking “a do-over," or duplication of Mueller’s probe into whether there was Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Nadler wrote in his response that Mueller’s report “contains evidence that in the wake of an attack by a hostile nation against American institutions, President Trump’s response was to undermine the investigation rather than take action against the perpetrators.”
Missed Deadline
From the Intelligence Committee, Schiff issued a subpoena for the material he was seeking last week, giving the department a Wednesday deadline to turn over the documents, which it did not meet.
Schiff told reporters that unless the department responds, the committee will move forward “reluctantly” next week with consideration of some type of enforcement action, which he said would be done in consultation with the general counsel of the House of Representatives.
“We hope the department will reconsider, but they are leaving us little choice but to refer legal enforcement,” he said. “The long and short of it was the deadline came and went without the production of any documents.”
Schiff says he wants the documents so the committee can learn more about all overtures from the Russian government to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Any such potentially compromising outreach by foreign operatives to Americans constitutes important and relevant information for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, John Harney, Anna Edgerton
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