>>/12491/  >>/12532/ (POTUS letter to Nancy, pb)

III. There Is No Legitimate Basis for Your "Impeachment Inquiry"; Instead the Committees' Actions Raise Serious Questions.

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Your recent letter to the Acting White House Chief of Staff argues that "[e]ven if an impeachment inquiry were not underway," the Oversight Committee may seek this information as a matter of the established oversight process. Respectfully, the Committees cannot have it both ways. The letter comes from the Chairmen of three different Committees, it transmits a subpoena "[p]ursuant ot the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry," it recites that the documents will "be collected a a part of the House's impeachment inquiry," and it asserts that the documents will be "shared among the Committees, as well as with the Committee on the Judiciary, as appropriate." The letter is in no way directed  at collecting information in aid of legislation, and you simply cannot expect to rely on oversight authority to gather information for an unauthorized impeachment inquiry that conflicts with all historical precedent and rides roughshod over due process and the separation of powers. If the Committees wish to return to the regular order of oversight requests, we stand ready to engage in that process as we have in the past, in a manner consistent with well-established bipartisan constitutional protections and a respect for the separation of power enshrined in our Constitution.