Mike Pompeo: I Was On The Ukraine Call

Mike Pompeo has found himself at the center of the House impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump and things aren’t going well for America’s top diplomat.

On Friday, he was subpoenaed, and along with that subpoena was a “courtesy” notification from Eliot Engel, Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings that lawmakers planned to schedule depositions for five State Department officials, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch (who Trump maligned on the phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky) and Kurt Volker (the US special envoy to Ukraine who resigned late last week).

Both Yovanovitch and Volker featured prominently in the whistle-blower complaint. It was Pompeo who recalled Yovanovitch earlier this year. The complaint seems to suggest that Yovanovitch’s assignment in Ukraine was terminated because of allegations leveled by former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko, whose implicit accusations are at the heart of Rudy Giuliani’s quest to gather damaging information on Joe and Hunter Biden. (Lutsenko has since told multiple American media outlets that he never had evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.)

Read more: Pompeo Accused Of ‘Illegal Witness Intimidation’; Mike Pence, Rick Perry Questioned

On Tuesday, when Pompeo tried to pitch the depositions as an example of “bullying” by House Democrats, Engel, Schiff and Cummings turned the tables on the secretary of state. “[You] should immediately cease intimidating Department witnesses in order to protect [yourself] and the President”, the lawmakers told Pompeo, adding that “any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress–including State Department employees–is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry”.

Fast forward to Wednesday and Pompeo has now admitted, for the first time, that he was on the phone call between Trump and Zelensky.

After attempting to explain why he personally sought to keep witnesses from being deposed by Congress, Pompeo said this: “As for was I one the phone call, I was on the phone call”. His tone and demeanor suggested he thought he may be able to make that admission in a kind of casual way that might obscure the gravity of it. If that was indeed the intent, he failed.

Pompeo then tried to make the public believe that the transcript of the call released by the White House itself doesn’t say what it clearly says.

“I’ve been secretary of state for I guess coming up on a year and half”, Pomepo reckoned, adding that he “knows precisely what the American policy is with respect to Ukraine”.

“It’s been remarkably consistent and we will continue to try to drive those set of outcomes”, he added.

To be clear, here is what “outcomes” Trump sought to “drive” on the call with Zelensky (this is verbatim – other than the red highlights – from the transcript):

President Zelenskyy: We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes…

The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you said yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

President Zelenskyy: Yes it is. very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation…

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could  speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son.

So, Mike is probably correct. The Trump administration’s policy with regard to Ukraine has, in fact, “been remarkably consistent”, and the president is prepared to “continue to try to drive those set of outcomes”.

Unfortunately, those “outcomes” include digging up dirt on American citizens in exchange for millions of dollars in Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Thanks for confirming, Mr. Secretary

Hopefully it won’t be lost on anyone that the account of this call was sequestered away in a code-word only computer server, which casts considerable doubt on Trump’s ongoing efforts to pretend as though the transcript (as excerpted above) constitutes a “perfect” interaction between a US president and the leader of a country that relies on US military aid.

Obviously, Pompeo – being the former director of the CIA – knew what he heard with his own ears on the call was inappropriate and you can be sure he was consulted or otherwise apprised of subsequent efforts to hide the account of the call.

In short: Mike is a witness, something House Democrats have made abundantly clear in their correspondence with the embattled secretary over the past several days.