Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the phone call during which President Donald Trump urged Ukraine’s leader to investigate Joe Biden and his son, it was reported Monday.
According to NBC News, a top State Department official confirmed Pompeo’s involvement in the call. During an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC News earlier this month, Pompeo deflected questions about the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This came before the White House released the transcript of the conversation between the two leaders, which clearly showed Trump pressuring Zelensky to probe Biden for alleged corruption.
“You just gave me information about [an intelligence] report, none of which we’ve seen,” Pompeo told Raddatz.
“I do think if Vice President Biden behaved inappropriately, if he was protecting his son and intervened with Ukrainian leadership in a way that was corrupt, I do think we need to get to the bottom of that,” he added. “America can not have our elections interfered with, if that’s what took place there.”
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Pompeo’s participation in the call between Trump and Zelensky is also revelatory because it shows he was fully aware his own department had approved U.S. military aid to Ukraine and that Trump attempted to use the delay of this assistance as an extortion tactic to obtain dirt on his opponent in the 2020 election. The funding to Ukraine was intended to help the country defend itself against a Russian incursion.
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Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), a member of the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, said in an interview on CNN Monday that Pompeo’s presence on the phone call was “very troubling” because the secretary of state clearly heard Trump asking Zelensky for a “favor.”
The secretary of State is not the only Trump associate to become engrossed in the Ukraine scandal, however. Trump also asked Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to probe Biden. On Monday, a trio of House Democratic leaders subpoenaed Giuliani and three of his associates for documents related to the phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s leader.
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