President tells Pelosi to get lost: White House throws down gauntlet to Nancy and says Donald Trump will not cooperate with her ‘illegitimate’ impeachment inquiry because it is ‘seeking to overturn 2016 election’

• The White House told Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Donald Trump and his staff would not be participating in her impeachment inquiry  
• White House counsel Pat Cipollone called the impeachment inquiry an illegal attempt to overturn the 2016 presidential election 
• ‘Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen,’ he wrote 
• The scathing, eight-page missive, could be read as the White House’s declaration of political war 
• The letter listed demands for Republicans including the right to call witnesses
• It also echoed the political attacks Trump launched against Adam Schiff 

The White House told Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday that Donald Trump and his staff would not be participating in her ‘illegitimate’ impeachment inquiry because it amounted to an illegal attempt to overturn the 2016 election.

‘Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen,’ White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote to the speaker and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engle, who are overseeing the inquiry.

The scathing, eight-page missive, was tantamount to a declaration of political war.

In the letter, Cipollone argued the president and his administration ‘reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process’ and would not cooperate with subpoena requests.

‘Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice,’ he wrote. ‘In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.’

Cipollone danced around the issue of a full House vote on an impeachment inquiry, stopping short of directly calling for one, because the GOP would likely lose in the Democratic-controlled chamber and some Republican lawmakers would be uneasy about being put in the politically tough spot of having to go on the record.

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