Thursday, May 21, 2020

Sec of State Pompeo: Crossed Many Ethical Lines is His Safe Now Under Trump

Good living, highfalutin rule breaker, and it shows
(If anyone needs to be canned it's Pompeo)

Turns out the slimiest SOB in the Trump mob-like White House is SOS Pompeo ... what a scum bucket robbing the national treasury and padding his personal wallet for his personal gain. He probably has a nice off-shore bank account or two or three. Now it’s all coming to light...

He and his wife both greedy scum (NY Times on that aspect).

Pompeo’s move to get Trump to fire the State Department’s IG (who happened to be on Pompeo’s trail as evidence mounts and shows more so every day)

One aspect from this phrase from Harry Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

For Pompeo having a dog may be causing him to lose friends — as accusations of his malfeasance start to mount.

Pompeo already the subject of a whistleblower complaint to Congress in July when he was charged with tasking diplomatic security with frivolous errands like collecting his dog from the groomer and picking up Chinese takeout (some agents complained about being treated as Uber Eats with guns).

After Trump fired the IG Steve Linick, the question immediately turned to why he was dismissed. The dismissal appears to be politically motivated and if so is unlawful.

One Democratic congressional aide told Foreign Policy reporters Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch that Linick was investigating Pompeo for “misuse of a political appointee at the Department to perform personal tasks for himself and his wife.”

Running errands for the Saudis: More accusations surfaced.

The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel (NY) said Linick was pursuing a second investigation, at Engel’s request: looking at the decision to sell $8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia even as a bipartisan coalition in Congress objected saying: “We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Pompeo said he fired Linick because he was “undermining” the State Department’s mission. He then said the move was not a retaliation and denied knowing of any investigations the inspector general was undertaking.

Trump defended Pompeo. He dismissed the allegations as unimportant saying recently: “And now I have you telling me about dog walking, washing dishes and, you know what, I’d rather have him on the phone with some world leader than have him wash dishes because maybe his wife isn’t there or his kids aren’t there, you know.”

Under the IG Reform Act, the bar for dismissing an inspector general is high. Sen. Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Trump remind him that “an expression of lost confidence, without further explanation, is not sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the law.” He then asked Trump “…to provide a “detailed reasoning of the decision to remove Linick before June 1.”

Is Pompeo in the doghouse? Like all cabinet secretaries, Pompeo serves at the pleasure of the president, and can only really be removed by the president. Pompeo has been especially adept at executing Trump’s agenda — most recently as an attack dog in the war of words with China. So, it’s unlikely Trump will sour on him. And, it’s remotely possible that Pompeo could be impeached, but it would require the GOP-controlled Senate to approve.

That is highly unlikely since GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) once tried to recruit Pompeo as the next senator from Kansas.

My 2 cents: In simple terms, Trump now needs to move quickly and fire Pompeo – but I suspect Trump would tell Pompeo “Resign to save some of your honor – my firing you would not.” Sounds like Trump who as before has asked many people to resign.

That way he won’t be blamed for any of their Agency firing, and Trump said one time before that he likes “Acting” people so in this case he might make Kushner the “Acting Secretary of State” I would not be surprised.

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.


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