Committee subpoenas.....

House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Hope Hicks, Annie Donaldson

By KYLE CHENEY

House Democrats on Tuesday issued subpoenas for Hope Hicks, the president's former adviser and confidante, and former White House deputy counsel Annie Donaldson.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas request documents from Hicks and Donaldson by June 4, and they request Hicks testify on June 19 and Donaldson on June 24.

The new push to compel documents and testimony from the former West Wing officials comes amid an increasingly pitched confrontation between House Democrats and the White House, which has tried to block testimony from current and former aides.

Donaldson’s notes on the chaotic atmosphere in the West Wing after special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment were among Mueller’s most vivid evidence of the president’s state of mind during the Russia probe.

The White House is sure to try to keep Hicks and Donaldson from complying with the committee’s requests, which come on the same day Donaldson’s former boss, ex-White House counsel Don McGahn, followed President Donald Trump’s request that he defy a Judiciary Committee subpoena to testify.

The White House has mounted an aggressive legal effort to block current and former aides from testifying as part of the Judiciary Committee’s investigation of potential obstruction of justice and other alleged abuses of power by Trump.

Trump and his allies have accused House Democrats of attempting to mount a “do-over” of Mueller’s investigation, which did not find enough evidence to charge any Trump associates with conspiring with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller’s report also painted a detailed portrait of efforts by Trump — many of which were cataloged by McGahn and Donaldson — to interfere with Mueller’s investigation. Though Mueller indicated he was unable to bring charges against Trump because of longstanding Justice Department policies, he described multiple instances in which Trump’s actions met the legal criteria for obstruction of justice.

Hicks was at Trump’s side for several of the instances that Mueller identified as possible examples of obstruction. Donaldson was featured in Mueller’s report repeatedly because of notes she took on the president’s comments and statements around when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and Mueller was appointed.

“Is this the beginning of the end?" Donaldson wrote, on May 9, 2017, which Mueller indicated she said “because she was worried that the decision to terminate Comey and the manner in which it was carried out would be the end of the presidency.”

Hicks and Donaldson were included in a batch of 81 Trump-associated individuals and entities from which the House Judiciary Committee requested documents and testimony in March.

In addition to its subpoenas for McGahn, Hicks and Donaldson, the panel has subpoenaed the Justice Department for access to the full Mueller report and its underlying evidence.