committee held an open hearing with the acting director of national intelligence. the following day chairman engel issued a subpoena to the state department in close consultation with myself and chairman cummings. we are deeply concerned about secretary pompeo s effort now to potentially interfere with witnesses whose testimony is needed before our committee, many of whom are mentioned in the whistleblower complaint and we want to make it abundantly clear that any effort by the secretary, by the president or anyone else to interfere with the congress ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction of the lawful functions of congress. and more than that, we ll allow an ad verse inference to be drawn as to the underlying facts. that if they are going to prevent witnesses from coming forward to testify on the allegations and the
hand over this information that we are requesting, then you are going to be adding to the problem. you are going to be considered, you are adding to what is potentially an article of impeachment, which is one of those against nixon. in the same way in a criminal case, someone may find themselves facing another obstruction of justice. there is an add inference, if you do something that is obstructionist like that, we can take an ad verse inference, we can use that as a piece of proof to say you didn t turn over these documents we are entitled to, therefore, we will infer those documents are harmful to you and helpful to our case. that s also from the legal system, you can get that inference, get a jury instructed bring the young to take an ad verse inference against the party. that s what they are saying, we will use this, you didn t give us the documents we sought. we can infer those were bad for you. turn them over. that this was going to be bad
whistleblower complaint, that will create an ad verse inference that those allegations are, in fact, correct. on monday, i issued a subpoena to rudy guiliani, again in consultation with chairman cummings and engel, we expect mr. guiliani to comply with the legal process we are using. he is obviously a key figure in all of this by his own admission as well as by the allegations in the whistleblower complaint. today and just within the last hour, half hour, chairman cummings noticed a subpoena that will go out later in this week or next week after the notice period has expired, that that committee intends to subpoena documents that the white house has been withholding from congress. we are, obviously, coordinating very closely with chairman cummings on that. on thursday ambassador voelker