Wyden Again Requests State Department Documents on Trump-Era Ukraine Activities

The State Department’s failure to respond to Wyden’s request ensures politically biased investigation, as the department continues to comply with Republican requests

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today again requested documents from the State Department on the full scope of the Department’s policy in Ukraine, including the firing of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, any effort to leverage trade negotiations with China to fabricate dirt on Vice President Joe Biden, and the activities of other relevant individuals.

Wyden’s request, which follows his original February 11, 2020, request, is designed to ensure a complete and accurate record of the State Department’s activities.

Despite curtailed operations due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic, the State Department has voluntarily provided more than 4,000 pages of documents in response to requests from Chairman Grassley and Chairman Johnson. On April 30, 2020, Senate Republican Committee chairmen sent an additional request to the State Department for documents and interviews with State Department officials. The State Department has not acknowledged Wyden’s request in any way.

Senator Wyden wrote, “On February 20, 2020 the State Department voluntarily produced over 3000 pages of documents to the Senate Committees addressing only the requests made by Chairman Johnson and Chairman Grassley. On April 8, 2020, the Department produced over 1000 additional pages. Although the requests made by the Republican Chairmen were not restricted by date, my staff’s review of these documents indicates that the State Department limited its response exclusively to documents from the Obama Administration and excluded any responsive documents generated during the Trump Administration.”

Wyden continued, “[T]he State Department still has not produced any of the materials I requested in my February 11, 2020 letter, nor communicated with my office in any way about the request. It is wholly inappropriate for the State Department to dedicate its limited resources to voluntarily complying with Republican requests without making a good faith effort to respond to Democratic requests. Accordingly, and in light of the chairmen’s latest request, I am renewing my request that any production to the Senate Committees include additional records related to Ukraine activities and policy under both Democrat and Republican administrations.”

Full text of the letter is available here and as follows:

Dear Secretary Pompeo:

On February 11, 2020, I wrote to you requesting additional information concerning investigations being conducted by the Chairmen of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Finance Committee (together the “Senate Committees”). As I noted in that letter, I am concerned that in the absence of additional State Department records, the Senate Committees risk acting on an incomplete and politically biased record of the Department’s activities related to Ukraine.

On February 20, 2020 the State Department voluntarily produced over 3000 pages of documents to the Senate Committees addressing only the requests made by Chairman Johnson and Chairman Grassley. On April 8, 2020, the Department produced over 1000 additional pages. Although the requests made by the Republican Chairmen were not restricted by date, my staff’s review of these documents indicates that the State Department limited its response exclusively to documents from the Obama Administration and excluded any responsive documents generated during the Trump Administration. The State Department has also not produced any of the materials I requested in my February 11, 2020 letter.

Since the State Department’s initial production, the United States has become embroiled in a devastating global pandemic. To date over 63,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 1 million have been infected. The pandemic and disrupted the lives of nearly every American and over 30 million Americans find themselves unemployed. The pandemic has also limited the operations of the State Department, and some services are only available for Americans “with a qualified life-or-death emergency.”

Despite the coronavirus’s ongoing disruption to State Department operations and everyday American life, the State Department has continued to voluntarily produce documents requested by the Republican Senate Committee Chairmen. During this time the National Archives has also been voluntarily producing documents requested by the Republican Chairman. The Archives has produced over 7000 pages of records from the Obama White House, including voluminous spreadsheets and guest lists from official White House events, all while the agency’s normal operations are curtailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore on May 1, 2020, the Chairmen sent a new letter requesting additional records from the State Department, as well as interviews with three senior State Department officials and one other staffer. They asked the State Department to respond to this request by May 14, 2020.

As I noted above, the State Department still has not produced any of the materials I requested in my February 11, 2020 letter, nor communicated with my office in any way about the request. It is wholly inappropriate for the State Department to dedicate its limited resources to voluntarily complying with Republican requests without making a good faith effort to respond to Democratic requests. Accordingly, and in light of the chairmen’s latest request, I am renewing my request that any production to the Senate Committees include additional records related to Ukraine activities and policy under both Democrat and Republican administrations. To that end, please provide the following information, as originally requested by me on February 11, 2020, including, but not limited to any records generated after January 20, 2017:

All State Department records related to Rudy Guiliani, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, Dmitry Firtash, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Cofer Black, Andrii Telizhenko, Serhiy Leshchenko, Mykola Zlochevsky, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Kostiantyn Kulyk, Viktor Shokin, and Yuriy Lutsenko.
When the Ukrainian Parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the decision was welcomed by the international community, and the United States’ policy toward Shokin was “widely understood internationally to be the right policy.” Furthermore, this policy had bipartisan support in Congress. Please provide any records related to support by Congress and the international community for the removal of Shokin, including, but not limited to, any such documents related to the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, European Union, International Monetary Fund, or the World Bank.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on October 3, 2019, President Trump told reporters “China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” referencing the unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing by Vice President and Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Several days later, Michael Pillsbury, an informal White House adviser on China, told the Financial Times that he had gotten “quite a bit of background on Hunter Biden from the Chinese” on a recent visit to Beijing. Please provide any State Department records relating to or referencing Hunter Biden’s activities in China, including, in particular, any records generated as part of on-going trade negotiations with China.
The requests made in the Senate Committees’ original letter are not restricted by date and a complete response therefore should include records created during the current administration. However, for the avoidance of doubt, I am specifically requesting any records relevant to the individuals and companies identified in the Senate Committees’ requests generated after January 20, 2017.

Please respond to these requests concurrently or before responding to the chairmen’s May 1 request for additional documents. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

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