Because they haven’t voted for a formal inquiry, rules of the formal inquiry are not yet in play. So they’re actually hoping people will avoid the subpoenas so then they can call impeachment on that as well.
Via Fox News:
The House of Representatives is currently on a two-week recess for the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but that doesn’t mean the wheels of its impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump won’t churn on Capitol Hill and in Congressional districts.
The House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees will continue to toil behind the scenes investigating and, eventually, crafting actual articles of impeachment. More on that in a moment.
On Friday afternoon, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., issued a subpoena demanding a slew of Ukraine-related documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by Oct. 4. They also scheduled depositions with five State Department officials between Oct. 2 and Oct. 10.
In a letter to colleagues, Schiff also confirmed that the intelligence committee will hold a closed briefing with intelligence community Inspector General Mike Atkinson on Oct. 4. Lawmakers also want to hear from President Trump’s attorney Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. Sources tell Fox the intelligence community whistleblower is putting together a legal team and may not be heard from for a few weeks.
“I do think the Attorney General has gone rogue,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, said Friday. “He has for a long time now. And since he was mentioned in all of this, it’s curious that he would be making decisions about how a complaint would be handled.”
There has long been tension between the administration and the Democratic House over providing witnesses and documents on a host of subjects, ranging from testimony by former White House Counsel Don McGahn during the Mueller probe to information regarding the census.
The subpoenas are part of a two-pronged strategy by Democrats. Get the information to help tailor the articles of impeachment, or convert a refusal to comply into an impeachment article itself.