Leah Millis/Reuters Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The State Department’s internal watchdog will brief a bipartisan group of congressional staffers on Wednesday afternoon about retaliation against department officials who are trying to cooperate with House Democrats in their impeachment probe.

Reuters reported the meeting would focus on retaliation against career department officials over Ukraine.

The State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, invited Democratic and Republican congressional committee staffers “to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine” from the department’s legal adviser, a letter obtained by The Washington Post said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and House Democrats spent much of Tuesday sparring and accusing each other of trying to intimidate State Department officials called as witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

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The State Department’s internal watchdog will brief a bipartisan group of congressional staffers on Wednesday afternoon about retaliation against department officials who are trying to cooperate with House Democrats in their impeachment probe.

Reuters reported the meeting would focus on retaliation against career department officials over Ukraine.

The State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, invited Democratic and Republican congressional committee staffers on Tuesday for a meeting the next day “to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine” from the department’s legal adviser, a letter obtained by The Washington Post said.

That invitation came on the same day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers that State Department officials would not appear for their scheduled depositions this week.



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The State Department’s inspector general usually operates independently of its political appointees. Neither the State Department nor its inspector general’s office returned Insider’s requests for comment.

Pompeo and House Democrats spent much of Tuesday sparring and accusing each other of trying to intimidate State Department officials called as witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Pompeo sent an aggressive letter to the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, characterising the depositions as “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”



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House Democrats quickly fired back. The chairmen of the Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Intelligence committees said in a statement that Pompeo’s attempts to block the committees from speaking to the officials were “illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction.”

Travelling overseas in Italy on Wednesday, Pompeo was combative on the probe, saying, “We won’t tolerate folks on Capitol Hill bullying and intimidating State Department employees. That’s unacceptable, and it’s not something that I’m going to permit to happen.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Pompeo was listening in on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that eventually spurred the impeachment inquiry.

Much of the inquiry is centered on a whistleblower complaint publicly, disclosed last week, detailing allegations that Trump manipulated his power for political gain ahead of the 2020 election by pressing Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and his son.

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