Tag: Mike Pompeo

JUST IN: State Dept. FOIA Doc Release Shows Links Between Oval Office, Giuliani, and Pompeo on Ukraine

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had multiple conversations in March 2019 with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, after the latter complained to Trump’s then-Oval Office operations director that he was getting nowhere “through regular channels.”

These revelations come from a 100-page trove of State Department documents released on Friday to the nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight. The documents, which were part of a FOIA lawsuit for all Trump administration dealings on Ukraine, include multiple emails of Pompeo’s call schedule, showing the nation’s top diplomat holding calls with Giuliani. (The documents can also be viewed here).

In addition to call logs showing Giuliani and Pompeo speaking several times, there is a March 27 email from Giuliani’s personal assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte, to then-Director of Oval Office Operations Madeleine Westerhout, who acted as Trump’s unofficial gatekeeper in the White House. Zafonte requests a phone number for Pompeo so she can set up a call between him and Giuliani because she has “been trying and getting nowhere through regular channels.”

View the complete November 23 article by Reed Richardson on the Mediaite.com website here.

Testimony ensnares Pompeo in Ukraine scandal as he mulls political future

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo became a major focus of the House impeachment inquiry Wednesday, with the recounting of emails and conversations linking him more closely to the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate President Trump’s political rivals than previously known.

The accounts — provided in sworn testimony by the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland — prompted fresh calls for Pompeo to testify on Capitol Hill and explain his actions concerning a Ukraine policy that he has at times refused to discuss but defended as “wholly appropriate.”

Sondland said several senior U.S. officials knew about a “quid pro quo” linking a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigations into Trump’s political rivals. In addition to Pompeo, he said, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and then-national security adviser John Bolton were aware of the effort.

View the complete November 20 article by John Hudson on The Washington Post website here.

Mike Pompeo reportedly told Republicans he plans to resign to protect his reputation. Good luck with that

AlterNet logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has been very quiet as witnesses in the House impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump tie him directly to the extortion scheme carried out by the administration and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Now a new report indicates that Pompeo has reportedly told three prominent Republicans that he intends to resign.

But Pompeo isn’t resigning for reasons of principle or because he has been implicated in an impeachable crime. Instead, he “is now concerned that his connection to Mr. Trump” is hurting his reputation. And he wants out of Dodge to run as a Republican candidate for Senate in Kansas.

That a man in significant danger of being himself impeached, if not indicted, would consider himself to still be a top Republican political candidate is remarkable, but that’s exactly what’s happening. He continues to be heavily recruited by national Republicans, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to enter the race in Kansas.

View the complete November 20 article from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity appears to be knee-deep in Trump’s Ukraine scandal — despite his profuse denials

AlterNet logoFox News host Sean Hannity raved that he never spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about ousted Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after a third witness confirmed the alleged call to impeachment investigators.

David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, testified under oath that Yovanovitch was the victim of a baseless smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, which led to her ouster. According to a transcript of the closed-door deposition released Monday, the smears originally stemmed from the conservative columnist John Solomon, who wrote in The Hill that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had claimed that Yovanovitch gave him a “do not prosecute list.” Lutsenko later retracted that claim.

Hale, the third-ranking official at the department, claimed to impeachment investigators that Hannity had pushed the same narrative on Fox News and that Pompeo had reached out to Trump’s favorite host.

View the complete November 20 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Sondland acknowledges Ukraine quid pro quo, implicates Trump, Pence, Pompeo and others

Washington Post logoA U.S. ambassador on Wednesday explicitly linked President Trump, Vice President Pence and other senior officials to what he came to believe was a campaign to pressure a foreign government to investigate Trump’s political rival in exchange for a coveted White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid.

The potentially historic, if hotly disputed, testimony from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is the most damaging yet for Trump in Congress’s intensifying inquiry into whether the president should be impeached.

More forcefully than he has before, Sondland declared that the Trump administration would not give Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a chance to visit the White House — unless Zelensky agreed to announce investigations that could help the president politically.

View the complete November 20 article by Rachael Bade, Aaron C. Davis and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Sondland Kept Pompeo Informed on Ukraine Pressure Campaign

New York Times logoThe diplomat at the center of the impeachment inquiry looped in the secretary of state at key moments as American officials pushed for investigations sought by President Trump.

WASHINGTON — Gordon D. Sondland, the diplomat at the center of the House impeachment inquiry, kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apprised of key developments in the campaign to pressure Ukraine’s leader into public commitments that would satisfy President Trump, two people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Sondland informed Mr. Pompeo in mid-August about a draft statement that Mr. Sondland and another American diplomat had worked on with the Ukrainians that they hoped would persuade Mr. Trump to grant Ukraine’s new president the Oval Office meeting he was seeking, the people said.

Later that month, Mr. Sondland discussed with Mr. Pompeo the possibility of pushing the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to pledge during a planned meeting with Mr. Trump in Warsaw that he would take the steps being sought by Mr. Trump as a way to break the logjam in relations between the two countries, the people said.

View the complete November 20 article by Michael S. Schmidt on The New York Times website here.

Top Diplomat Testified Pompeo Called Hannity About Yovanovitch Smears

“It did come up at some point with the secretary,” David Hale said. “I understood that he did call Sean Hannity.”

David Hale, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said in his closed-door impeachment testimony that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Fox News host Sean Hannity last spring to ask about the smear campaign launched against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to a transcript that was made public Monday night.

Discussing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and pro-Trump media to besmirch the reputation of Yovanovitch ahead of her ouster as ambassador, Hale noted that Pompeo spoke to Giuliani twice in late March regarding the allegations.

At the time, conservative columnist John Solomon had reported that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Yovanovitch had given him a “do not prosecute list.” (Lutsenko would later walk back that claim.)

View the complete November 18 article by Justin Baragona on the Daily Beast website here.

Pompeo announces U.S. will no longer view Israeli settlements as illegal

Axios logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the U.S. will no longer view Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem as “inconsistent with international law.”

Why it matters: This move is an important shift because it cancels a legal position held by the U.S. State Department since 1978, when the Carter administration determined that the settlements were a violation of international law.

  • On the other hand, the move is mostly symbolic and will have no practical implications. The Trump administration didn’t see the settlements as illegal and this decision today will simply make it a more formal position.

Behind the scenes: A senior Israeli official told me Israel was consulted by the Trump administration on this issue several months ago. He said the U.S. wanted to know if this decision could harm Israel legally or internationally. Israel answered that it supports the move and that it will not harm the country in any way.

  • A U.S. official told me this decision was several months in the making and the State Department was leading the process. The official said the decision was supposed to be announced last week, but that it was postponed because of the escalation around Gaza.

View the complete November 18 article by Barak Ravid from Israel’s Channel 13 news on the Axios website here.

Trump blames Mike Pompeo for State Department officials’ devastating testimony in impeachment inquiry: ‘Rein your people in!’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump unloaded recently on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whom he blames for devastating testimony against him the House impeachment inquiry.

The president confronted Pompeo, who has been his closest ally, during an Oct. 29 lunch at the White House, according to four current former senior administration officials who spoke to NBC News.

“(Trump) just felt like, ‘rein your people in,’” said one senior administration official.

View the complete November 18 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

State Department inspector general slams smear campaign against employee

Washington Post logoThe State Department’s inspector general rebuked a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday, saying the aide had played a role in reassigning a staffer suspected of being disloyal to the Trump administration.

The inspector general’s report recommended that Pompeo consider disciplining Brian Hook, the point man for Iran policy. The report, however, covers Hook’s previous tenure as head of an in-house think tank known as the Policy Planning Office, located on the department’s storied seventh floor near the secretary’s office.

The report cited a chain of emails among senior officials, including Hook, and prominent conservatives, following an article in the Conservative Review that characterized a staffer in the office as a “trusted Obama aide” who had “burrowed” into the State Department during the Trump administration. She was dismissed from Hook’s staff three months early, a decision the inspector general concluded was based not on merit but on improper, inappropriate and false perceptions of her political opinions, association with the previous administration and her national origin.

View the complete November 14 article by Carol Morello on The Washington Post website here.