At hearing to authorize subpoenas, lawmakers fight over security clearances

The committee will vote on subpoenas related to two issues — White House security clearances and the US Census — Tuesday afternoon, escalating their fight against administrative stonewalling.

Democrats want to subpoena to interview Carl Kline, the former White House official who had broad authority over the security clearance process at the White House, and whom Tricia Newbold, a current White House official, told the committee played a key role in reversing security clearance decisions for more than two dozen White House staffers.

The Oversight Committee will also vote to authorize three subpoenas related to their investigation into how a question about citizenship ended up on the Census.

The subpoena on security clearances comes after Newbold told the committee at the end of March that she had kept a list of 25 instances in which decisions not to grant security clearances were reversed by those above her.

Trump White House's self-inflicted security debacle

"She raised her concerns inside the White House ... and they targeted her for retaliation," Cummings said. "Yet, despite these risks, she has agreed to identify herself publicly."

Republicans accused Democrats of just trying to embarrass the White House. Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the committee, slammed Cummings for voting to subpoena Kline after he agreed to voluntarily testify, and said Cummings had "cherry picked" information and issued a press release "after interviewing one witness."

"Now we're going to subpoena the guy," Jordan said. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Oh please," Cummings shot back.

Instead of issuing the subpoenas, Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican, proposed referring Michael Cohen, the President's former lawyer and fixer, for a perjury investigation at the Department of Justice.

But Cummings lashed out at Republican claims that he was only trying to embarrass the President. "What we are trying to do is protect our secrets," he said.

Cummings said Newbold came forward at "great personal risk."

"This lady was scared," he said. "She was scared to death and she was scared sadly of our Republican colleagues" in explaining why Democrats didn't tell Republicans about the interview until the afternoon before it occurred, which was on a Saturday.

In a letter sent to the committee Monday after Cummings released Newbold's interview, Kline's lawyer said Monday that he would be willing to voluntarily appear before the committee. But Tuesday, Cummings said it was too little too late.

The committee also authorized three subpoenas related to the census, including a subpoena to Justice Department official John Gore. Democrats said that Gore refused to answer more than 100 questions related to the Census citing issues of "separate litigation" when he'd sat for a voluntary interview.

The second and third subpoenas were for documents from the Justice Department and from the Department of Commerce. Cummings said that the administration has sent over thousands of documents, but many were already public or were heavily redacted.

"We don't want thousands of pieces of paper, we want specific ... documents we've asked for," Cummings said.

Republicans accused Democrats of trying to influence the upcoming Supreme Court case on the citizenship question with their investigation on the census. Earlier Tuesday morning, they issued a report detailing their argument that Democrats were trying to influence the courts.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed to previous reporting of White House officials using WhatsApp messages as reason for why Congress has to get to the bottom of the White House security clearance issues.

"Really, what is next, putting nuclear codes in Instagram DMs?" Ocasio-Cortez said.

Ocasio-Cortez, leaving the hearing, told CNN that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump should have their security clearances revoked depending on how their clearances were initially granted and were done through the "proper channels."

"This is completely insecure, and the issue with that as we saw in the lead up to say many attacks and so many issues when we have so many channels of communication anything can get hacked, and if we don't know what hostile forces know about us, then we are putting thousands of lives at risk," Ocasio-Cortez said.

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