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Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory
The finding came in an order directing the Justice Department to hand over secret grand jury evidence from the Mueller investigation to House impeachment investigators.
By Charlie Savage and
Breaking News Update: The House is legally engaged in an impeachment inquiry, a federal judge ruled on Friday, delivering a major victory to House Democrats and undercutting arguments by President Trump and Republicans that the investigation is a sham.
The House Judiciary Committee is entitled to view secret grand jury evidence gathered by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in a 75-page opinion. Attorney General William P. Barr had withheld the material from lawmakers.
Typically, Congress has no right to view secret evidence gathered by a grand jury. But in 1974, the courts permitted the committee weighing whether to impeach President Richard M. Nixon to see such materials — and, Judge Howell ruled, the House is now engaged in the same process focused on Mr. Trump.
Judge Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote that law enforcement officials’ need to keep the information secret from Congress was “minimal” and easily outweighed by lawmakers’ need for it.
“Tipping the scale even further toward disclosure is the public’s interest in a diligent and thorough investigation into, and in a final determination about, potentially impeachable conduct by the president described in the Mueller report,” she wrote.
In reaching her decision, Judge Howell rejected the contention by Mr. Trump and his allies that the investigation Democrats are pursuing, which has since expanded to encompass the Ukraine scandal, is not a legitimate impeachment inquiry.
The Justice Department is reviewing the decision, a spokeswoman said.
In arguing that the impeachment inquiry is a sham, Republicans have noted that the full House has not voted for a resolution to authorize one, as it did in 1974 and 1998 at the start of impeachment proceedings targeting Nixon and Bill Clinton. Democrats have countered that no resolution is required under the Constitution or House rules, noting that impeachment efforts to remove other officials, like judges, started without one.
Judge Howell agreed, calling the Republican arguments to the contrary “cherry-picked and incomplete” and without support in the text of the Constitution, House rules, or court precedents. She also noted that the House Judiciary Committee began considering whether to impeach President Andrew Johnson, after the Civil War, well before the full House approved a resolution blessing it.
“Even in cases of presidential impeachment, a House resolution has never, in fact, been required to begin an impeachment inquiry,” she wrote.
An earlier version of the article is below.
WASHINGTON — The triad of House committees leading the impeachment inquiry unleashed another round of subpoenas on Friday, demanding that three more administration officials — including the acting head of the White House budget office — testify as part of their investigation into President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine.
With the White House ordering all staff to stonewall the inquiry, the committees directed the three officials to submit to depositions early next month: Russell T. Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget; Michael Duffey, another top Trump appointee there; and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a counselor at the State Department.
Their accounts could be crucial to investigators’ understanding of the Trump administration’s decision to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine earlier this year, a move that administration officials and at least one witness in the inquiry have said resulted from a directive from the president.
Mr. Vought and Mr. Duffey both played roles in freezing the aid, and investigators are eager to question them on how Mr. Trump asked for the freeze and why.
The issue is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, which is investigating whether Mr. Trump abused his power to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to incriminate Mr. Trump’s political rivals. The $391 million security assistance package for Ukraine was delayed for months, as was a White House meeting between the two presidents, as Mr. Trump sought assurances that Mr. Zelensky would announce investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter, and other Democrats.
All three of the officials were asked to appear in early November, suggesting that Democrats intend to continue the private phase of their investigation for several more weeks before convening public hearings.
The latest bevy of subpoenas — issued jointly by the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform Committees, which are leading the investigation — will further challenge the administration’s reluctance to cooperate with the inquiry. Mr. Brechbuhl is a close ally of Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, and it is unclear if he will join other State Department officials in defying White House orders to ignore subpoenas and appear before the committee.
“We will not be participating in a sham process designed to re-litigate the last election,” Mr. Vought said on Fox News earlier this month.
Mr. Vought announced this week that neither he nor Mr. Duffey, who was involved in the approval of the orders freezing the money, would appear as requested.
The budget office, under Mr. Vought’s leadership, has also refused to provide communications and other records that could potentially reveal more about the handling of the aid package for Ukraine.
Mr. Duffey, who moved to the budget office from the Department of Defense earlier this year, began overseeing the approval and distribution of the foreign aid in part because he wanted to become more involved in the process, known as apportionment, according to a senior administration official. Career officials remain involved in the process, while Mr. Duffey now reviews and signs off on it.
Administration officials have said that Mr. Trump personally asked for the aid to be frozen ahead of a phone call with the new Ukrainian president where he asked for an investigation into Mr. Biden. And William B. Taylor Jr., the United States ambassador to Ukraine, testified this week that he heard a White House budget official say that the president had ordered the staff there not to approve the money.
But Mr. Trump has doubled down on his assertion that there was nothing wrong with his discussion with Mr. Zelensky, again telling reporters on Friday that “this was a perfect conversation.”
“This is a hoax — just like there was no collusion,” Mr. Trump said repeatedly of the allegations, charging that Democrats are “trying to make us look as bad as possible.”
The committees are also scheduled to hear in closed session on Saturday from Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department.
Nicholas Fandos and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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