Pompeo has boxed himself in: Saying he knew little or nothing about how Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, sought to tie White House cooperation to Ukrainian investigations of Democrats raises questions about why the secretary was unaware of Giuliani’s maneuvering. But saying he knew about the scheme raises questions about why he didn’t do more to stop U.S. foreign policy from becoming a vehicle for the president’s political vendettas.
“He can’t have it both ways. He can’t say ‘Well, I delegated this, and I didn’t really get involved or ‘Yeah, I know, but I didn’t approve,’” said Adam Ereli, a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain. “He’s stuck.”
POLITICO examined the testimonies of impeachment witnesses so far as well as Pompeo’s own comments to piece together what’s known about his role. What emerges is a picture of a secretary of State kept apprised of the Giuliani-led “irregular channel” of U.S. policy toward Ukraine who nonetheless did little to rein it in or protect U.S. diplomats damaged by the affair.
That said, there also are indications that Pompeo was privately troubled by the events. And there are glimpses of occasions when he sought to quietly intervene with the president or his close allies – but little evidence that he fought hard to keep U.S. policy contained to the customary “regular channel” run by his own staff.
Pompeo was warned about Giulani
There’s no doubt Pompeo knew about efforts by Giuliani, who is not a U.S. government employee, to influence U.S. policy toward Ukraine. What’s not clear is how seriously Pompeo took the president’s attorney and the possibility that his activities could diverge from official U.S. policy.
The witness who so far has gone the furthest to tie Pompeo to the mess now facing the president is Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a political appointee who came to play an outsize role in diplomacy toward Ukraine, which is not in the EU.
Sondland has admitted to a “quid pro quo.” He says he told a Ukrainian official that the government in Kyiv likely would have to announce investigations into former vice president Joe Biden, a Trump political rival, to get U.S. military aid.
In his private deposition, Sondland on several occasions mentions Pompeo as greenlighting his activities. “I understand that all of my actions involving Ukraine had the blessing of Secretary Pompeo,” he said at one point.
In fact, he says that Pompeo, and then-national security adviser John Bolton, told him to work on Ukraine, and that he assumed they were doing so at the behest of the president. Pompeo, he added, “continually” told him to pursue Ukraine issues. He also said he discussed Giuliani’s Ukraine role in general terms with Pompeo.
“And Pompeo rolled his eyes and said: ‘Yes, it’s something we have to deal with,” Sondland said in the private account.
Sondland provided fresh support for Pompeo’s involvement during his open testimony, which included written communications with officials including Pompeo. He cited, for instance, a July 19 email copied to Pompeo, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and “a lot of senior officials.” He said that in that email, he reveals that he “just talked to” Ukraine’s president and secured a commitment for a “fully transparent investigation.”
Kurt Volker, at the time the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine negotiations, testified privately that he’d raised his concerns about Giuliani’s freelance operation in Ukraine with Pompeo.
“I described my concern that he is projecting a damaging or a negative image about Ukraine, and that’s reaching the president, and that I am trying to work with Ukrainians to correct that messaging, correct that impression,” Volker said. According to him, Pompeo said he was “glad” Volker was trying to correct Giuliani’s narrative.
The testimony also shows that if U.S. diplomats weren’t talking directly to Pompeo about Ukraine-related concerns, they often spoke with Ulrich Brechbuhl, the State Department counselor and longtime friend of Pompeo who serves as a conduit to the busy secretary.
Pompeo arguably could not have stopped Giuliani
Pompeo spoke with Giuliani at least three times this year, including as the Trump lawyer was spreading baseless smears of Marie Yovanovitch, the now-former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, according to accounts from others caught up in the affair.
David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, told lawmakers that he’d found call records showing that Pompeo called Giuliani on March 28 and on March 29. Hale did not speak to the content of those conversations.
By April 25, Pompeo had told his aides that Trump had lost confidence in Yovanovitch — he did not say why, according to various testimonies — and that they needed to recall the ambassador early from Kyiv.
Pompeo and Giuliani spoke again in September, according to Volker. This was as Giuliani was going on television to defend his actions in Ukraine and to insist that he did everything at the State Department’s direction — a claim Volker denied.
Volker said he had earlier told Pompeo of his efforts to connect a Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, with Giuliani at the Ukrainian’s request. “I had spoken with the secretary, and I knew the secretary knew that I had connected them,” Volker told lawmakers in his private deposition.
But Giuliani appeared to think Pompeo wasn’t aware of the sequence of events. In a call around Sept. 22, Pompeo told Volker that he had spoken with Giuliani, and that the former New York mayor believed it was not clear to the public that Volker had connected him with Yermak.
Volker pointed out to Pompeo that the State Department had put out a statement weeks earlier addressing the issue, which Pompeo told Volker to share with Giuliani. Volker said he did so.
Still, when asked if Pompeo “was helpless to stop Giuliani from interfering with official U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine?” Volker said, “Honestly, yes. I’m sure he could have called Rudy Giuliani, but would Rudy Giuliani stop doing what he’s doing because the secretary of State calls him? I’d be surprised.”
Sondland expressed a similar sentiment, given that at the end of the day, Giuliani was reporting to Trump. So Pompeo would have “hit a brick wall when it came to getting rid of Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said in his private testimony.
“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said at the outset of his public testimony. “Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt.”
For what it’s worth, former NSC staffer Tim Morrison said Bolton and he were both “frustrated” with Sondland and the fact that his “direct boss” — Pompeo — wasn’t reining in his Ukraine activities. Morrison described this situation as “the Gordon problem.”
Pompeo supported sending military aid to Ukraine
William Taylor, now the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, was among the diplomats who attested that the secretary of State backed robust U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Volker had urged Pompeo to recruit Taylor, who had decades of experience including a previous stint as the U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, to run the embassy following Yovanovitch’s early recall.
Taylor said he sought Pompeo’s personal assurances of support before taking the job. In a May 28 meeting, Pompeo “assured” Taylor that “the policy of strong support for Ukraine would continue and that he would support me in defending that policy.” Pompeo also told Taylor that he “would make this case [for strong support of Ukraine] to President Trump.”
Pompeo appeared careful to limit his recordable correspondence on Ukraine, however. In late August, as word spread that the U.S. had frozen $391 million in military aid for Ukraine, Taylor said he sent a direct cable to Pompeo voicing his displeasure. Pompeo never responded.
However, Taylor said he’d heard that the secretary brought the cable with him to a meeting with the president on the topic. Pompeo is believed to have sided with other Cabinet officials at various times in urging the president to unfreeze the Ukraine aid.
As POLITICO has reported, Pompeo grew so frustrated with the aid freeze that in early September he told his staff to release the $250 million the State Department controlled despite what the White House Office of Management and Budget had ordered. Bloomberg reported State Department lawyers determined they could override the Office of Management and Budget.
And according to a call readout from Sept. 17, Pompeo assured his Ukrainian counterpart of “unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Pompeo is evasive about the July 25 call
The secretary has largely danced around questions about his role as U.S.-Ukraine relations took bizarre twists. In particular, he’s avoided sharing his thoughts on the content of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that is now at the core of the impeachment inquiry.
The White House on Sept. 25 released the memorandum detailing the call, but it wasn’t until days afterward that the State Department even acknowledged that Pompeo was among those listening. The testimonies show that some of his top aides had no idea he’d been on the call until the news was leaked to The Wall Street Journal.
On Sept. 22, asked directly by ABC News what he knew about the president’s conversations with Ukrainian leaders, Pompeo evaded the question by saying he hadn’t seen reports about the whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry. He deflected follow-up questions, never acknowledging he was on the July 25 call.
One reason Pompeo’s silence on this issue has bothered many at the State Department is that Trump on the call disparaged Yovanovitch and ominously warned that she was going to “go through some things.” But the bigger question is what Pompeo did, if anything, when it came to another major element of the call: Trump’s requests of Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
Pompeo has suggested he opposed releasing the July 25 call memo, saying, “Those are private conversations between world leaders, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to [release them] except in the most extreme circumstances.”
According to Volker, Pompeo spoke with Zelensky as the White House prepared to release the record of the call. Pompeo “informed him that we felt we had no choice but to release the transcript,” Volker said.
Pompeo wouldn’t support his people – at least not in public
Pompeo is known as the “Trump whisperer” for a reason: He’s kept his job by keeping his disagreements with the president private, and bending as much as possible in public to make it seem like they are in sync.
That’s probably why he’s said virtually nothing in public to defend diplomats who have been attacked by Trump. This week, he deferred to the White House when asked by reporters about Trump’s tweet attacking Yovanovitch while she was testifying last Friday.
But Pompeo may have tried to protect Yovanovitch in private, according to various testimonies. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council staffer, told lawmakers that Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan had told her that “both he and Secretary Pompeo had tried their best to head off what happened” to Yovanovitch.
Yovanovitch said in her public testimony that she’d been told “that there were a number of discussions between the president and Secretary Pompeo, and that he actually did – did keep me in place for as long as he could.”
And David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, said Pompeo had mentioned receiving a letter from a congressman -- revealed to be Texas Republican Pete Sessions, who is no longer in Congress -- in 2018 alleging that Yovanovitch had said derogatory things about Trump. But Pompeo told Hale that he “wasn’t going to take these allegations seriously unless he saw evidence behind them.” No such evidence has emerged.
In the spring, as Giuliani and even Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, attacked Yovanovitch, she asked that the State Department issue a statement expressing confidence in her. It didn’t happen. The reason she was given via intermediaries: Officials worried the president would undercut a statement, perhaps with a tweet.
While it’s not clear what role Pompeo played, the State Department did earlier this year call some of the allegations against Yovanovitch an “outright fabrication.”
Yovanovitch said she was told that either Pompeo, or someone close to him, reached out to Fox News conservative host Sean Hannity to ask him to back off from promoting the smears, and that “things kind of simmered down” for a while. (The various testimonies differ as to who made the call, and Hannity denies speaking with Pompeo about it.)
Michael McKinley, a former top adviser to Pompeo, testified that he asked the secretary and other senior State officials to issue a statement of support for Yovanovitch in late September as the impeachment inquiry became a reality.
He thought it would send a good signal to the department’s rank and file, especially because of the manner in which Trump spoke of Yovanovitch in the July 25 call. Pompeo acknowledged his requests but said nothing of substance in response, McKinley said.
Eventually, McKinley was told by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus “that the secretary had decided that it was better not to release a statement at this time and that it would be in part to protect Ambassador Yovanovitch not draw undue attention to her,” he explained to lawmakers. Ultimately, McKinley said, Pompeo’s lack of support for career professionals led him to resign after nearly four decades in the Foreign Service.
Pressed by reporters on McKinley’s concerns, Pompeo has tried to recast the question. He said, for instance, that McKinley didn’t raise any concerns with him in May when Yovanovitch was recalled. But McKinley’s account was centered on the conversations he had with Pompeo in September.
On Monday, during a press conference about Middle East issues, Pompeo would not say if he still had confidence in Taylor, who remains the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. Neither did he voice support for other diplomats tangled in the impeachment inquiry, although he offered broad praise of the State Department’s employees as a whole.
He did, however, point out that he replaced Yovanovitch with Taylor, whose testimony has been some of the most damaging for the president. That, Pompeo argued, should undermine the idea that “somehow this change was designed to enable some nefarious purpose,” he said.
Pompeo has tried to slow-roll, and muddy, the investigation
Pompeo has been surprisingly visible over the past two and a half months as the Ukraine issue has seized the headlines, giving plenty of interviews, but he’s usually careful about what he says.
He’s downplayed the impeachment inquiry as “noise.” He’s been unwilling to criticize Giuliani.
He insists that Trump’s Ukraine policy is better than the Obama administration’s. He’s even promoted the conspiracy theory, floated by Trump, that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
He also says that when it comes to the impeachment inquiry, the State Department will do “everything that we’re required to do by the law and the Constitution.” On this point, Democrats in the House insist Pompeo is being misleading.
If anything, Pompeo has slow-rolled the investigation. Following the White House’s lead, Pompeo has ordered his employees not to testify in the inquiry – orders many have ignored in light of congressional subpoenas. The State Department also hasn’t turned over the documents House members have demanded.
In an Oct. 1 letter, Pompeo accused Hill Democrats of trying to “intimidate, bully and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”
This has frustrated not just lawmakers but also some of the “distinguished professionals” to whom Pompeo refers.
George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of State called to testify, was among them. He, for one, “had not felt bullied, threatened, and intimidated,” Kent told lawmakers.
Kent noted that despite receiving congressional requests for documents on Sept. 9 and Sept. 23, as well as a Sept. 27 subpoena, it wasn’t until “after the close of business on Oct. 2” that the State Department issued a “formal instruction” on gathering documents. The investigating House committees wanted the material by Oct. 4.
Pompeo recently said that he hopes “everyone who testifies will go do so truthfully, accurately. When they do, the oversight role will have been performed, and I think America will come to see what took place here.”
David Holmes, a top aide to Taylor in Kyiv, quoted those comments from the secretary as he explained his appearance before lawmakers, which he specified was not an opportunity he’d sought out.
As far as Pompeo’s own record, testimonies from his aides suggest he’s careful to limit his paper trail. Hale told lawmakers that he and Pompeo “almost never exchange email. He has once or twice sent me an email. … I primarily go back through his staff or directly on the phone.”
The few records of Pompeo’s communications that have emerged show no sign of discomfort with his underlings’ efforts, as outlined in the messages Sondland shared Wednesday.
On Aug. 22, Sodland asked Pompeo: “Should we block time in Warsaw for a short pull-aside for Potus to meet Zelensky? I would ask Zelensky to look him in the eye and tell him that once Ukraine’s new justice folks are in place (mid-Sept) Ze should be able to move forward publicly and with confidence on those issues of importance to Potus and to the US. Hopefully, that will break the logjam.”
“Yes,” Pompeo responded.
Then, on Sept. 3, Sondland emailed Pompeo to thank him for a recent visit to Brussels that came shortly after Vice President Mike Pence met with Zelensky in Warsaw.
“Mike, thanks for schlepping to Europe,” he wrote to his boss. “I think it was really important and the chemistry seems promising. Really appreciate it.”
“All good,” Pompeo replied. “You’re doing great work; keep banging away.”