Donald Trump lashes out over impeachment as Democrats threaten to subpoena White House

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at House Democrats, casting their impeachment inquiry as a political crusade and again threatening to unmask the still-unidentified whistle-blower. “He either got it totally wrong, made it up, or the person giving the information to the whistle-blower was dishonest,” Trump said. “And this country has to find out who that person was, because that person’s a spy, in my opinion.” The bulk of the whistle-blower’s complaint has been corroborated by Trump himself. He has acknowledged asking the Ukrainian president to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden even as Trump was withholding critical aid to that country. A White House account of the July 25 call described Trump as asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a “favour”. Asked about his rhetoric potentially endangering the whistle-blower, Trump brushed off the question. Federal law guarantees whistle-blowers’ anonymity, but Trump said, “I don’t care.” “I think the whistle-blower should be protected … if the whistle-blower is legitimate,” he said. Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, have both said the whistle-blower has followed the law and filed a legitimate complaint. Trump’s outburst, which occurred during a meeting with the president of Finland in the Oval Office, came amid an intensifying showdown with Capitol Hill as House Democrats said they would issue a subpoena to the White House on Friday if the Trump administration did not voluntarily turn over records. Whistle-blower in Trump’s Ukraine scandal is CIA officer, US reports say Among the documents being sought are any communications among administration officials involving Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The State Department inspector general, Steve Linick, is briefing legislative staff behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon on what has been described as an “urgent” matter. Linick has not said publicly what he will discuss, but Democrats have previously expressed concerns that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been pressuring officials not to cooperate with congressional investigations. Pompeo rejected criticism that he was failing to cooperate with Capitol Hill during a news conference in Italy, one of his stops on a four-nation tour of Europe this week. He accused congressional staff leading the impeachment inquiry of mistreating State Department workers. “We won’t tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying, intimidating State Department employees,” he said. “That’s unacceptable and it’s not something that I’m going to permit to happen.” At the same news conference, Pompeo acknowledged that he was listening in on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. It is common practice for diplomats and intelligence officials to take part in phone calls between heads of state, but Pompeo had previously suggested he did not know details of the conversation. Bob Menendez, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Pompeo should recuse himself from Ukraine-related issues because of his involvement. He also said Pompeo “must refrain from any direct or indirect participation in or influence over the State Department response to the Ukraine scandal, including congressional requests for documents or to interview State Department personnel”. Hillary Clinton calls Trump ‘corrupt human tornado’ amid Ukraine scandal Congressman Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said refusal to hand over documents to Congress would create the “adverse inference that those [underlying] allegations are in fact correct,” while Democrats have warned that any attempts by the administration to block the impeachment inquiry could themselves be impeachable offences. “We’re not fooling around here, though. We don’t want this to drag on months and months and months,” Schiff said. He also sharply criticised Trump’s attacks on the unidentified whistle-blower. Trump had apparently alluded to the execution of past American spies during private remarks last week, saying that “we used to handle it a little differently than we do now”. “This is a blatant effort to intimidate witnesses,” Schiff said. “It’s an incitement of violence.” Adam Schiff should only be so lucky to have the brains, honor and strength of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. For a lowlife like Schiff, who completely fabricated my words and read them to Congress as though they were said by me, to demean a First in Class at West Point, is SAD! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019 Schiff has been a frequent target of Trump’s anger, and the president told reporters in the Oval Office that he should resign and be investigated for treason. Trump asserted that the White House had undermined the Democratic impeachment inquiry by releasing a memo of the phone call with Zelensky, claiming that it exculpates him and that Democrats “never thought” he’d make it public. In fact, Republicans and Democrats alike were surprised last week that he released the call memorandum because it backed up the whistle-blower’s allegation that Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to send the message that Democrats were not spending all their time on impeachment and instead were working on lowering prescription drug prices and advancing Trump’s proposed North American trade agreement. Explained: how Ukraine found itself at the heart of a Trump scandal Progress is being made on a revised Nafta trade agreement despite the lack of public comments about it, she said. “The quiet you hear is progress,” said Pelosi. Trump had threatened that nothing would get done in Congress as Democrats pursued their impeachment inquiry. The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306. Get a better candidate this time, you’ll need it! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019 “If the president is saying, ‘If you question my actions, you can’t agree on any subject,’ the ball is in his court on that,” Pelosi said. Trump rejected Pelosi’s comments on Twitter, even before the news conference ended. “It is just camouflage for trying to win an election through impeachment,” he tweeted. “The Do Nothing Democrats are stuck in mud!”