Tag: Mike Pompeo

Pompeo tries to spin himself out of a tricky situation

Washington Post logo“Not — not — not once — not once, George, did Ambassador McKinley say something to me during that entire time period.”

— Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Oct. 20, 2019

“Three probably.”

— former State Department adviser to Pompeo Michael McKinley, after being asked how many conversations he had with Pompeo “about this matter,” interview with congressional investigators, Oct. 16

Was the secretary of state caught in a lie? Or is he just artfully answering questions — or, more to the point, not answering questions?

This is a story of spin. See if you can keep track of the bouncing ball.

The Facts

Michael McKinley was the U.S. ambassador to Brazil when Pompeo asked him to leave his post early in 2018 to act as his senior adviser and liaison to the Foreign Service. McKinley abruptly resigned in October after the controversy over the administration’s dealings with Ukraine erupted, in protest of what he told lawmakers was the use of ambassadors to advance domestic political objectives and a failure by the State Department to support those officials.

View the complete November 11 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

Pressure builds on Pompeo as impeachment inquiry charges ahead

The Hill logoThe impeachment inquiry spotlight is starting to shift toward Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as testimony from senior State Department officials raises questions about whether he enabled a shadow foreign policy led by Rudy Giuliani or if he pushed back against decisions harmful to U.S. interests.

Pompeo has been an ardent defender of President Trump, but witness testimony highlights small instances of pushback by the secretary, illustrating the perilous tightrope walk he faces of preserving his relationship with the president and ensuring his political future.

But Democrats have seized on witness accounts of when Pompeo failed to counter Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, arguing the secretary favored protecting his own political interests over the State Department’s.

View the complete November 7 article by Laura Kelly on The Hill website here.

AP sources: State Dept. worried about defending ambassador

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department’s third-ranking official is expected to tell House impeachment investigators on Wednesday that political considerations were behind the agency’s refusal to deliver a robust defense of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

People familiar with the matter say the highest-ranking career diplomat in the foreign service, David Hale, plans to say that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior officials determined that publicly defending ousted Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would hurt the effort to free up U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

Hale, who arrived Wednesday morning to testify behind closed doors, will also say that the State Department worried about the reaction from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was one of the strongest advocates for removing the ambassador, according to the people. Several State Department officials have told lawmakers they opposed the dismissal of Yovanovitch in May, a personnel change that came at Trump’s direction.

View the complete November 6 article by Matthew Lee on the Associated Press website here.

Mike Pompeo accused of plotting escape route back home during taxpayer-funded trips to Kansas

AlterNet logoAccording to the Guardian, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been jetting back and forth between Washington his home state of Kansas for a number of bizarrely political events, including radio interviews, “workplace development” talks with first daughter Ivanka Trump, and — on one strange occasion — handing out State Department buttons emblazoned with “#Swagger.”

kylie 🌻@kcylizzle
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be speaking with Wichita State students this morning in an effort to recruit students to work as diplomats for the State Department. It’s unclear how these students were chosen to participate in this event.

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kylie 🌻@kcylizzle

These buttons were just passed out to students.

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Pompeo Refuses To Say Whether Ukraine Call Transcript Was Edited

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was listening in to Donald Trump’s infamous July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, was asked on Wednesday whether the summary released by the administration was complete. He refused to answer.

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert who was also listening in on the call, reportedly told the House impeachment inquiry committees that the document was not a full transcript and that some of Trump’s most overt efforts to link his quid pro quo of security aid for opposition research were omitted. Vindman contemporaneous attempts to get the transcript corrected were unsuccessful.

Pompeo was asked by Fox News whether portions of the call relating to the Bidens and the quid pro quo had been left out of the transcript, as Vindman had testified. Pompeo refused to say they had not.

View the complete November 2 article by Josh Israel on the National Memo website here.

Mike Pompeo doubles down on conspiracy theory claiming Biden and Obama withheld Ukraine assistance

AlterNet logoIt’s often forgotten that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended West Point, where he took a pledge to hold honesty above all. And the person who seems to forget it most often is Mike Pompeo.

The Washington Post reports that Pompeo appeared on Fox News Wednesday evening not only to profess his support for an entire series of definitively debunked, never-made-any-sense-to-begin-with conspiracy theories—such as American company CrowdStrike ferrying a secret “missing” DNC server to Ukraine, and the Steele dossier actually being written by a Ukrainian hired by Hillary Clinton. Pompeo refused to condemn any of the things that Trump was asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate, even though they aren’t just false—they are genuinely bizarre.

Then Pompeo made his own contribution to the Hall of Ludicrous by adding a new conspiracy theory, one that involves President Barack Obama: “I couldn’t tell you why, I couldn’t answer if it’s because of Hunter Biden, that Barack Obama and Vice President Biden didn’t give weapons to Ukraine. They’ll have to answer for that. Maybe — maybe I just don’t have the full story.”

View the complete October 31 article by Mark Sumner from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Pompeo Skirting Legality With ‘Official’ Trips To Kansas

It looks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may be violating the Hatch Act.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked the Office of Special Counsel to look into whether Pompeo’s repeated trips to Kansas violate the act.

The Hatch Act bars executive branch employees from using government resources for partisan purposes, such as campaigning while on the clock. But it appears Pompeo may be doing just that.

View the complete October 31 article by Lisa Needham on the National Memo website here.

State Dept. official broached Pompeo’s role in Ukraine in new testimony

The Hill logoA leading State Department official testified before Congress on Saturday and touched upon Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s role in the administration’s dealings with Ukraine — the issue at the center of the Democrats’ fast-evolving impeachment investigation into President Trump.

Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of European and Eurasian Affairs, broached the topic of Pompeo while being deposed in the Capitol by the three House committees — Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs — leading the impeachment investigation, according to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I can’t get into the details,” Perry said, “but certainly there are questions.”

View the complete October 26 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Syria cease-fire agreement lifts threat of U.S. sanctions while letting Turkey keep buffer zone

Washington Post logoISTANBUL — Turkey agreed Thursday to a cease-fire that would suspend its march into Syria and temporarily halt a week of vicious fighting with Kurdish forces, while allowing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to carve out a long-coveted buffer zone far beyond its borders.

The agreement, announced by Vice President Pence after hours of negotiations, appeared to hand Turkey’s leader most of what he sought when his military launched an assault on northeastern Syria just over a week ago: the expulsion of Syrian Kurdish militias from the border and the removal of a U.S. threat to impose sanctions on Turkey’s vulnerable economy.

Pence said Turkey had agreed to pause its offensive for five days while the United States helped facilitate the withdrawal of ­Kurdish-led forces, called the ­Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), from a large swath of territory stretching from Turkey’s border nearly 20 miles south into Syria. After the completion of the Kurdish withdrawal, Turkey’s military operation, which began Oct. 9, would be “halted entirely,” Pence said.

View the complete October 17 article by Kareem Fahim, Karen DeYoung and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Turkish foreign minister completely undermines Mike Pence’s ‘ceasefire’ spin on northeastern Syria

AlterNet logoWith President Donald Trump withdrawing U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and abandoning the United States’ Kurdish allies, Turkish forces are making an incursion into that area just as critics of the U.S. withdrawal predicted they would. A U.S. delegation including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday met for four hours with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday. At a press conference following the meeting Pence, claimed Turkey agreed to a “ceasefire” in northeastern Syria. But Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in a separate press conference made it clear that a “ceasefire” isn’t what the Turkish government and Erdoğan have in mind.

Speaking in Ankara, Turkey, Cavusoglu told reporters, “This is not a stopping of the operation. This is not a ceasefire because a ceasefire takes place between two legitimate parties.”

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”We agree on collecting YPG heavy weapons, destroying their positions, fortifications” – Turkey’s Foreign Minister Cavusoglu

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“Pause in Turkey’s operation in Syria is not a cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides” – Turkey’s Cavusoglu

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View the complete October 17 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.