House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to the top Republican on the committee on Wednesday, asking him for the names of any witnesses the GOP wants to question as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
Democrats don’t plan on having all the witnesses who testified behind closed doors testify in the upcoming public impeachment hearings so if Republicans want, they can request any of the witnesses to testify in public.
Schiff said each request “must be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance to the inquiry of the testimony of each requested witness.”
Witnesses must be able to speak to Trump’s request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into” allegations of corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Though the elder Biden publicly admitted that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid unless Ukraine ousted a prosecutor who was probing his son’s employer, Burisma, both have denied wrongdoing and Democrats have said Trump’s request amounted to trying to get a foreign government investigate “the president’s political rival” since Biden is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The other two parameters set by the House Rules Committee are whether Trump tried to pressure Zelensky to advance his personal political interests and whether Trump and his administration tried to obstruct, suppress, or cover up information to conceal evidence about Trump’s actions and conduct.
“In the case that the chair declines to concur in a proposed action,” which includes issuing a subpoena to prospective witnesses, “of the ranking minority member,” Nunes would “have the right to refer to the committee for decision the question whether such authority shall be so exercised and the chair shall convene the committee promptly to render that decision, subject to the notice procedures for a committee meeting,” the resolution states.