Chris Kleponis/Zuma
Update, 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5: Mulvaney has reportedly declined to testify, with a White House spokesperson calling the impeachment investigation a “ridiculous, partisan, illegitimate proceeding.”
.@hogangidley45 says Mulvaney won't be testifying: “Past Democrat and Republican Administrations would not be inclined to permit Senior Advisers to the President to participate in such a ridiculous, partisan, illegitimate proceeding – and neither is this one.”
— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) November 5, 2019
Impeachment investigators have asked acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to submit to a deposition later this week, suggesting that he may have been “directly involved” in the alleged quid pro quos that led to the impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump.
In a letter asking Mulvaney to appear before House investigators on November 9, the chairs of three congressional committees cited Mulvaney’s potentially “substantial first-hand knowledge and information relevant to the House’s impeachment inquiry.”
House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Oversight and Reform Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) wrote, “The investigation has revealed that you may have been directly involved in an effort orchestrated by President Trump, his personal agent, Rudolph Giuliani, and others to withhold a coveted White House meeting and nearly $400 million in security assistance in order to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations that would benefit President Trump’s personal political interests, and jeopardized our national security in attempting to do so.”
Mulvaney recently told reporters that Trump had indeed withheld military aide in part to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations into Democrats. He later attempted to retract that admission.
