May 15, 2019

White House Makes It Official: It Will Reject Democrats’ Request for Trump Records

A new letter lays out the president’s case rebuffing congressional oversight.

Kevin Dietsch/ZUMA

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The White House officially rejected demands from House Democrats to turn over records and make administration officials available for testimony on Wednesday, marking the latest escalation in the ongoing battle for information between President Donald Trump and Congress.

In a lengthy letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the president’s lawyer laid out his case for rebuffing the request and claimed the committee’s demands amounted to efforts to harass the president and relitigate the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference.

“Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” Cipollone wrote, arguing that Democrats on the committee had failed to provide “any proper legislative purpose” for their various inquiries, which include requests for testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn and former White House personnel security director Carl Kline.

Cipollone’s claim that Democrats lack a legislative purpose to back their demands has been central to several of Trump’s legal team’s refusals to comply with Democratic inquiries. The line was repeated as recently as Tuesday when a group of lawyers representing the president resisted the House Intelligence Committee’s requests for documents related to its investigation into whether the president’s lawyers attempted to obstruct the panel’s Russian interference probe. It was also used by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin earlier this month when he refused to turn over Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Responding to Cipollone’s letter on Wednesday, Nadler blasted the White House for “claiming the president is a king.” 

“No president, no person in the United States is above the law,” he continued. “This is preposterous.”

Read Cipollone’s letter below:

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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