State Department officials comply with House impeachment subpoenas, defying White House order.
The White House has ordered administration officials not to comply with subpoenas from the three House committees that have launched an impeachment probe against President Donald Trump. For the most part, from the Office of Management and Budget to the Department of Energy to the Vice President's office, officials have abided by that command.
Three of the officials are currently working for the U.S. government and remain on the government payroll: Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Trump from her post as ambassador to Ukraine and now serves as a fellow at Georgetown University; Gordon Sondland, the Republican donor who Trump nominated as ambassador to the European Union; and George Kent, who serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and whose portfolio includes Ukraine.
Yovanovitch was the first to break the mold among current officials -- instructed not to show up, before being subpoenaed by the House, and then arriving on Capitol Hill. She was recalled from her post in Kyiv in May, two months early after a year-long pressure campaign by Giuliani and his associates to have her removed over unfounded allegations that she badmouthed Trump or blocked Ukrainian investigations into the Democratic Party.
The next day, Kent -- who was informing senior State Department officials that what he said was a"fake news driven smear campaign" against Yovanovitch -- testified about Giuliani's role pushing a Ukraine policy that benefited Trump personally outside of formal channels.
Caught between those two competing jurisdictions, Kent's lawyers at least pointed to a line in the Foreign Service Act, which among other things, governs how Foreign Service officers behave and forbids"the withholding of information from the Congress or the taking of any action against a member of the Service who discloses information to the Congress."
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