Instead, Wolf is participating in a meeting with Senate Homeland Security Committee staff regarding his nomination to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Thursday, according to two committee aides and confirmed by DHS, though it’s unclear if timing of the meeting conflicted with the hearing.
Democratic Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi denounced Wolf’s decision to defy a subpoena to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.
“As the person running the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Wolf should be here to testify, as secretaries of Homeland Security have done before. Instead, we have an empty chair — an appropriate metaphor for the Trump Administration’s dereliction on so many of these critical homeland security issues,” Thompson said at the hearing.
Last week, the committee issued the subpoena to Wolf amid whistleblower allegations that he urged department officials to alter intelligence.
“Regrettably, he has chosen to defy the subpoena and refuses to come before the Committee after committing to do so should appall every Member of this Committee,” Thompson said Thursday. “Insisting Mr. Wolf keeps his commitment to testifying before Congress isn’t playing politics — it’s doing our job.”
Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee, conceded he was also “disappointed” that Wolf was not present at the hearing, but called Democrats’ decision not to accept Cuccinelli in his place a “political stunt.”
Little recourse for not complying with subpoena
The House has few, if any, options for enforcing the subpoena aside from arresting Wolf themselves — an unlikely and archaic scenario.
A recent appeals court decision gutted the House’s ability to ask judges to enforce the decision.
The House could also vote to hold Wolf in criminal contempt, but the Trump administration has made clear it would not bring a criminal case against its own officials to enforce a subpoena. The White House and several powerful agencies have repeatedly refused to hand over information to the Democratic-led House in other inquiries, such as impeachment of the President and investigations into Russian interference and the handling of the 2020 census.
Instead, the administration has avoided the most contentious House subpoenas by tying them up in court, a route that’s been widely…
Read More: Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf defies subpoena and skips hearing