US Lawmakers Seek Records on 9 Staffers Reportedly Involved in Political Purge

19:05 GMT, 15 March 2019

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Department of State must provide records by next week on at least nine of its employees who were allegedly involved in a purge of holdovers from the Obama administration - either as victims of perpetrators, senior Democrats on the Senate and House of Representatives foreign affairs committees said.

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"The Department must submit all documents requested by March 21 and facilitate Committee interviews with Department officials implicated in this matter by April 30," Congressman Eliot Engel and Senator Robert Menendez said in the letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday.

The letter accused the State Department of stonewalling past requests for the records and threatened to use "appropriate tools at our disposal to prompt a substantive response."

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The lawmakers claimed that the State Department had failed to respond to three prior requests for the information during the past year.

The letter requested records of nine individuals by name: Christine Ciccone, Makan Delrahim, Sean Doocey, Julia Haller, Brian Hook, Edward Lacey, Matthew Mowers, Margaret Peterlin and Sahar Nowrouzzadeh.

It was not clear whether the officials named had been punished or whether they had participated in a purported purge by the Trump administration of Obama-era holdovers in key positions.