Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s defense Sunday against recent Trump-Ukraine news was two-pronged: Describe reports of the U.S. withholding aid for political purposes as “hypotheticals” and refuse to comment on “internal deliberations.”
In a contentious interview on ABC‘s “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos, Pompeo said he "never saw" the president’s desire for a political probe in the decision-making process as a reason to keep military funds from Ukraine.
On Thursday, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters that the aid was withheld partly because of a request for Ukraine to investigate theories that Democrats received foreign assistance in the 2016 election.
“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy,” Mulvaney said, a reversal of past White House denials of the idea of international quid pro quo by President Donald Trump.
Pompeo on Sunday said he would leave it to the chief of staff to explain his words: “I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and secondary things based on what someone else has said.”
Stephanopoulos countered, “Except it's not a hypothetical, we saw the chief of staff —”
“George, you just said, 'If this happened.' That is, by definition, a hypothetical.”
“The chief of staff said it did.”
A pause. Then, “George, you asked me if this happened. It's a hypothetical. I've told you what I observed, what I saw the process related to this very funding.”
Pompeo was also cautious in commenting on attorney Rudy Giuliani's involvement and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch's claim that she was removed from her post despite being told she did nothing wrong.
Was Giuliani acting with Pompeo’s blessing and supervision? “I've had one consistent policy as the secretary of state, to not talk about internal deliberations inside the administration. I'm not going to change that policy for you here this morning.”
Did Pompeo know what Giuliani was doing? “I don't talk about internal deliberations inside the administration.”
Why did Pompeo approve Yovanovitch's removal? “I'm not going to get into personal matters inside the State Department.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
