The White House’s acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, rejected a subpoena by House Democrats to answer questions related to the ongoing Trump impeachment inquiry, skipping the deposition on Friday.
Three House committees this week requested Mulvaney voluntarily give testimony in a closed-door deposition at Congress, as evidence in the Trump impeachment probe increasingly suggests that he was directly involved in the president's alleged efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into former US Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son for business dealings in Ukraine.
On 17 October, Mulvaney said in a news conference that Trump had ordered holding back military aid to Kiev in a movement to pressure the nation to launch an investigation into the Bidens, although Mulvaney later tried to walk back his statement.
On 24 September, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump regarding the 25 July phone call with Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky, based on a complaint by a whistleblower who claimed that the president misused his power by requesting that Kiev investigate the Bidens.
The White House released what they claimed was a full transcript of the call and announced that there was nothing wrong with the conversation, while suggesting that Democrats are engaged in a political witch hunt is intended to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election.
