Tag: Mike Pompeo

Pompeo Flees Questions About Trump War Crime Threats

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abruptly ended a State Department briefing on Tuesday and walked off, refusing to answer follow-up questions on Donald Trump’s threats to Iranian cultural sites.

At the Tuesday briefing, Pompeo was asked by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell whether he would push back against a demand from Trump to target cultural sites in Iran after the Pentagon said on Monday it would refuse orders to attack such sites, noting that it would violate international law.

Mitchell specifically cited comments from Trump on Sunday aboard Air Force One justifying attacks on cultural sites. Continue reading.

Mike Pompeo is ‘all in for war’ with Iran — recalling Cheney and Rumsfeld before 2003 Iraq ‘debacle’: national affairs correspondent

AlterNet logoAs tensions between the United States and Iran continue to escalate following the drone attack that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, one of the most visible cheerleaders of that escalation is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Journalist Joan Walsh, in a January 7 article for The Nation, notes the troubling parallels between Pompeo beating the war drum in 2020 and members of the Bush Administration pushing for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The secretary of state is normally in charge of diplomacy,” Walsh asserts, “but Pompeo seems all in for war, and he’s peddling it with the same mix of mendacity and recklessness the George W. Bush crew used to justify their 2003 Iraq debacle.”

Walsh notes that on Friday, January 3, Pompeo claimed, “I saw last night, there was dancing in the streets in parts of Iraq. We have every expectation that people not only in Iraq, but in Iran, will view the American action last night as giving them freedom.” Continue reading.

Pompeo decides against run for U.S. Senate seat in Kansas

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has decided not to run for the open U.S. Senate seat in Kansas this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Pompeo told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday that he would remain at the State Department, three days after U.S. forces struck and killed a prominent Iranian general, triggering uncertainty in the region.

The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the matter. Continue reading.

Trump is already searching for his next secretary of state

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo says he isn’t running for Senate next year. Those close to him say he hasn’t made a final decision yet. But that hasn’t prevented a barely concealed competition from breaking out within the administration over who might replace him as the nation’s top diplomat. President Trump has fueled the fire by sounding out lawmakers and officials as he considers his options.

Pompeo has plenty of time to decide whether to run before the official filing deadline in June. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is pushing him hard to jump into the Kansas Senate race, several officials and GOP lawmakers told me, out of fear former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach might win the primary and then lose the general election to a Democrat. Pompeo is also mulling a run for president in 2024, and McConnell has argued the Senate would be a perfect perch from which to do that.

Trump said last month that Pompeo came to him and told him he wanted to stay. But Trump also hedged by saying that if there’s any danger the GOP could lose that seat, Pompeo might change his mind and “would win in a landslide because they love him in Kansas.” Pompeo himself, meanwhile, is sending mixed signals. This month he began posting from a new personal Twitter account with Kansas farmland in the banner photo.

Mike Pompeo pilloried over photo showing policy board created by Hillary Clinton is now full of ‘lots of white men’ but no women

AlterNet logoU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under fire after posting a photo of members of his Foreign Affairs Policy Board that is comprised of nearly all white men and no women.

Secretary Pompeo

✔@SecPompeo

A pleasure hosting Foreign Affairs Policy Board members for dinner last night in advance of our third plenary meeting this year. Their feedback and perspectives are critical to the formulation and execution of a foreign policy that best serves the American people’s interests.

View image on Twitter

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In 2011 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created the advisory board. It has, before Secretary Pompeo, been a far more diverse group.

In years past, the board has included notable women including former Congresswoman Jane Harman, think tank president Anne-Marie Slaughter, and former governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, among others. The initial founding group of 11 included four women, in addition to Sec. Clinton.

Continue reading

Senate Confirms John Sullivan as U.S. Ambassador to Russia

New York Times logoMr. Sullivan, a close ally of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who had been serving as deputy secretary of state, was confirmed by a vote of 70 to 22.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed President Trump’s nominee John J. Sullivan to be the next United States ambassador to Russia, succeeding Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who resigned in August after a turbulent tenure characterized by sanctions against Moscow and investigations into the Kremlin’s election interference.

Mr. Sullivan, a close ally of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who had been serving as deputy secretary of state, was confirmed by a vote of 70 to 22. His confirmation has been closely watched as one of the key steps needed to pave the way for a possible Senate run by Mr. Pompeo in his home state, Kansas.

In Moscow, Mr. Sullivan will assume a particularly delicate post that is fraught with questions about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia and his efforts to forge a closer working relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin, despite Mr. Putin’s aggressive actions around the world.

Continue reading

Linda Ronstadt tells Pompeo at dinner that he’ll ‘be loved’ when ‘he stops enabling Donald Trump’

The Hill logoSinger Linda Ronstadt took a swipe at Secretary of State Mike Pompeoduring a State Department dinner celebrating her and other Kennedy Center honorees on Saturday night, Variety reported.

At the start of the reception, during which honorees are typically presentedwith their Kennedy Center Honors medals, Pompeo reportedly referenced the singer’s 1975 track “When Will I Be Loved.”

“As I travel the world, I wonder, when will I be loved?” he reportedly said during his welcome address.

Continue reading

Pompeo-Trump relationship tested by impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo is on rocky terrain with President Trump and members of the State Department following critical testimony by diplomatic officials in the public impeachment hearings led by House Democrats. 

Career foreign service officers and Trump appointees came forward last week to lay out in great detail how the president and his allies carried out a smear campaign against the now-former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and how the administration’s policy toward the country raised concerns among veteran diplomats.

The witnesses testified about their frustrations with the lack of a public defense from Pompeo when State Department employees were under attack or sidelined, and Trump has expressed frustration with officials underneath Pompeo who provided the bulk of damaging testimony about the president’s dealings with Ukraine.

View the complete November 27 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Pompeo says Trump’s debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory is worth looking into

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that a debunked conspiracy theory pursued by President Trump accusing Ukraine, not Russia, of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking the network of the Democratic National Committee is a worthy subject of investigation.

In a news conference at the State Department, Pompeo was asked if the United States and Ukraine should investigate the conspiracy theory, which several former senior Trump officials have called a “fictional narrative” with “no validity.”

“Anytime there is information that indicates that any country has messed with American elections, we not only have a right but a duty to make sure we chase that down,” Pompeo told reporters.

View the complete November 26 article by John Hudson on The Washington Post website here.

New Documents Show Giuliani Urged Pompeo To Fire Ukraine Ambassador

When diplomat Marie L. Yovanovitch (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine) publicly testified as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, she made it clear that Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, did everything he could to get her fired from her Ukraine post. American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain information about Yovanovitch’s firing —and internal U.S. State Department e-mails and documents released on Friday, the New York Times reports, show that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also played a significant role in Yovanovitch being fired.

“The e-mails indicate that Mr. Pompeo spoke at least twice by telephone with Mr. Giuliani in March as Mr. Giuliani was urging Ukraine to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals, and trying to oust a respected American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, who had been promoting anti-corruption efforts in the country,” Edward Wong and Kenneth P. Vogel report in the Times. “Mr. Pompeo ordered Ms. Yovanovitch’s removal the next month.”

Wong and Vogel go on to report that “as part of the effort to oust her, Mr. Giuliani and his associates encouraged news outlets favorable to the president to publicize unsubstantiated claims about Ms. Yovanovitch’s disloyalty to Mr. Trump.”

View the complete November 25 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.