Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed on Wednesday that he listened in on the July 25 call in which President Donald Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirms he listened to Trump’s Ukraine call
He acknowledged he participated a day after publicly pushing back against House Democrats’ request to interview State Department officials.
Jen Kirby is a senior foreign and national security reporter at Vox, where she covers global instability.
Pompeo’s confirmation comes less than 48 hours after the Wall Street Journal first reported that the Secretary of State had participated in the Ukraine phone call that’s now at the center of a brewing impeachment battle.
The revelation raised more questions about the role of Pompeo and the State Department in the efforts of Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to get the Ukrainian government to look into the president’s political rival.
“I was on the phone call,” Pompeo said briefly Wednesday during a press conference in Italy, though he refused to make any additional comments on whether the call was appropriate or not.
Pompeo’s admission also calls into question his previous statements about the phone call and the whistleblower complaint whose allegations about the conversation between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky were largely verified by the partial transcript of the call released by the White House.
In an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz on September 22, Pompeo feigned ignorance about the call between Zelensky and Trump. Neither the transcript nor the whistleblower complaint had been publicly released at that point, but when Raddatz brought up the whistleblower complaint he said he hadn’t seen it. Pompeo also dismissed the allegation that Trump had improperly pressured Zelensky.
Raddatz then asked whether it was appropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent.
“I think I saw a statement from the Ukrainian foreign minister yesterday, said there was no pressure applied in the course of the conversation,” Pompeo said.
House Democrats have subpoenaed Pompeo, requesting State Department documents related to the July 25 call and Giuliani’s outreach to the Ukrainian government. House Democrats also scheduled depositions with five State Department officials, which were expected to start this week.
Pompeo, on Tuesday, rejected the House’s request to depose those witnesses, accusing top Democrats of trying to “bully” and “intimidate” career officials. Even so, it appears as though at least two officials have agreed to show up for those interviews, as requested: Ambassador Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch, the ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled in May, and US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, who resigned late last week after his name was featured prominently in the whistleblower report.
The State Department Inspector General Steve Linick — a quasi-independent office within the department — also requested an “urgent” bipartisan briefing on Capitol Hill about documents related to the State Department and the Ukraine. The meeting is particularly intriguing given Pompeo’s very public stonewalling the day before.
Now that Pompeo has admitted he listened in on the Ukraine call, it’s likely his role in this Ukraine scandal will face even more scrutiny — along with questions about why he refused to be forthcoming about it in the weeks before the story broke.
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