Committees in the Senate and House of Representatives that oversee US foreign policy sought interviews with State Department officials in an investigation of politically motivated retaliation by the Trump administration against career civil servants, according to a request from top lawmakers to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th February, 2020) Committees in the Senate and House of Representatives that oversee US foreign policy sought interviews with State Department officials in an investigation of politically motivated retaliation by the Trump administration against career civil servants, according to a request from top lawmakers to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday.
The request came in a letter to Pompeo from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel and Ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Robert Menendez, a joint press release said.
"Over the past year, the Committees' investigations, as well as two State Department Inspector General reports from 2019, found that top administration officials improperly retaliated against career employees, often based on unfounded perceptions about political views or affiliation," the release said.
The letter accuses the State Department of failing to make career employees available for transcribed interviews, while requesting testimony from a number of officials, including US Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook.
The letter noted that the House of Representatives first asked to interview Hook nearly two years ago.
President Donald Trump makes no secret of his disdain for Democrats in Congress, due to the recent House impeachment as well as an earlier investigation that failed to find collusion between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
As a result, Trump has repeatedly characterized the Democrats' attempts as political witch hunts intending to reverse the results of the 2016 election and has blocked congressional testimony from administration officials and fired other officials who appeared before Congress over presidential objections.
