“We’ll be busy,” said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of his committee’s activities during the scheduled two-week recess that will end Oct. 15. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images congress House Democrats accelerate impeachment inquiry Democrats are issuing new subpoenas and some lawmakers are planning to return to Washington despite a scheduled congressional recess.

House Democrats are moving swiftly in their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, subpoenaing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for key documents on Friday and announcing plans to haul in the intelligence community’s top watchdog next week over a scheduled recess.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) confirmed Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, will testify in a closed session before the panel next Friday.


“This hearing is critical to establish additional details, leads and evidence,” Schiff wrote in a letter to his colleagues late Friday. “More subpoenas and investigatory steps will occur next week, as the investigation accelerates, and we will update you as those steps become public.”

That lawmakers will be working over the two-week recess reflects a growing sense of urgency among House Democrats to more aggressively confront and investigate Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which were documented in a whistleblower complaint that the Trump administration initially withheld from Congress.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoenaed Pompeo on Friday after his department refused to turn over documents about Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a top political rival.

The three House committee chairs pursuing the investigation — Schiff, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) — told Pompeo on Friday that his refusal to comply with the Foreign Affairs panel’s subpoena would be used as evidence of obstruction that could form the basis of a distinct article of impeachment.

“The subpoenaed documents shall be part of the impeachment inquiry and shared among the committees. Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” the three chairmen wrote.

The three committees also want any information the State Department has about the involvement of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Additionally, five senior State Department officials have been scheduled for depositions during the upcoming congressional recess.

“The department has previously acknowledged that Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker played a direct role in arranging meetings between Rudy Giuliani, who has no official role in the U.S. government, and representatives of President Zelensky,” the chairmen wrote to Pompeo on Friday.

Volker resigned his post as the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine negotiations on Friday amid the increasing attention on his role in the controversy.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team agreed earlier this week to press ahead with an impeachment inquiry that’s squarely focused on the Ukraine scandal engulfing Trump and some of his senior officials — allegations that have unified their fractious caucus against the president in a way that previous ones have not.

Three members of the intelligence panel told POLITICO that they expect the committee to issue subpoenas for documents and witnesses as they work to corroborate the whistleblower’s claims. Schiff later confirmed the action in his letter to colleagues.

Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, previously said the complaint was both urgent and credible. The whistleblower, meanwhile, is awaiting legal guidance from the office of the director of national intelligence regarding what he or she is permitted to tell lawmakers. Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his power to pressure Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, and possibly withhold critical military aid to the Eastern European country.

In a separate letter to Democrats Friday afternoon, Pelosi reiterated that the impeachment investigation “will be centered” in the Intelligence Committee, adding that Democrats will have “a series of conference calls” over the two-week recess to keep everyone updated.

House Democrats’ campaign arm also sent lawmakers an internal poll conducted Thursday and Friday that showed likely voters more supportive of impeachment investigation than ever before. Fifty percent of likely voters said they would support "impeaching Donald Trump and removing him from office" and forty-nine percent of those surveyed said they were more likely to vote for a Democrat who backed an impeachment investigation versus thirty-eight percent who said they'd support a Republican opposed to the inquiry

The polling data, while still early, could help calm vulnerable Democrats who long resisted supporting impeachment in large part because voters were so against the idea.

The Intelligence Committee is in the spotlight as it pursues the Ukraine investigation, but members of the Judiciary Committee and lawmakers on some of the other panels investigating Trump are privately jockeying to ensure they have a say in how the impeachment inquiry culminates.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus during a closed-door meeting Thursday that the impeachment process, which his panel oversees, is not likely to be a sprawling one that includes a dozen articles of impeachment.

Nadler’s key message to the group? “It’s going to happen sooner than people think,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who attended the Thursday meeting.

“When I said it needs to happen before the end of the year, people started laughing, saying it’s going to happen much faster than that,” Khanna added.

But Nadler also stressed to lawmakers that the House should not sideline other potentially impeachable offenses, including those outlined in the Mueller report and allegations that Trump is violating the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the Constitution.

“It makes no sense to put aside the Mueller investigation,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), an Intelligence Committee member, said in an interview. “We can’t forget the special counsel’s report and the crimes that were elicited there.”

Lawmakers and aides emphasized that it is too early to discuss potential articles of impeachment and when such measures could come to the House floor. Much of the timing, they say, will depend on when — and if — they are able to secure further evidence from the whistleblower and the inspector general.

As the House moves ahead with its impeachment inquiry, top Democrats have increasingly discussed the possibility of pursuing “obstruction of Congress” as part of potential articles of impeachment, including during a closed-door meeting on Monday with committee chairs.

The focus on obstruction of Congress would be in addition to the House investigations centering on the mounting Ukraine scandal. Obstruction of Congress articles would be a catchall rebuke of the president, lawmakers say, over his refusal to comply with dozens of congressional oversight requests over the past year.

“Obstruction of Congress is a unifying pattern of misconduct that we’ve seen from the beginning of this Congress,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a Judiciary Committee member. “So I would be shocked if it doesn’t find its way into whatever our final work product is.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who sits on the Judiciary panel, said there is a “strong possibility” that obstruction of Congress articles could receive an eventual vote.

“The president has now had a long lineage of obstruction of Congress,” she said, pointing to the Trump administration’s refusal to initially turn over the whistleblower complaint and the stonewalling by Trump confidants like his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Schiff said the White House will only “strengthen the case on obstruction” if it refuses to comply with his committee’s investigation.

Still, there is a simmering debate within the caucus about just what should be in the articles of impeachment that Democrats will likely draft. The difference of opinion is part of a larger behind-the-scenes turf way playing out over just who is overseeing the impeachment investigation.

“I think the articles of impeachment, assuming we refer them to the House, there will be a debate about what those should be,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), a Judiciary Committee member. “What the Judiciary Committee is going to do over the next couple of weeks is begin to start to think about the legal framework.”

Jake Sherman contributed to this report.



