When the Pompeo hearing began, Trump had tweeted: “With universal voting by mail (not absentee voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACTIVE and FRAUDULENT election in history. It will be a great shame for the US Election until people can vote properly, safely and securely?
When asked if the president can delay the election, Pompeo, a Harvard-trained attorney, said the Justice Department and others would make that determination, although the Constitution gives that power to Congress. And when asked if he was indifferent to the election date, Pompeo just said that “it should happen legally.”
Pompeo declined to give a direct response when asked if he is concerned about the security of voting by mail, a common way for diplomats and service members abroad to cast their vote, saying he would leave it up to the agencies where electoral security is the “Primary Approach.”
The top diplomat also told lawmakers that, “I think I voted by absentee vote, I think while I was a soldier and also when I was a member of Congress I did it a couple of times.”
“I have to say that getting a small group of people to vote by absentee ballot is very different from deciding to have a full vote by mail, a vote by mail program,” he said. “Those are two fundamentally different beasts.”
Pompeo also declined to answer a question about whether the State Department will accept the certified results of the United States presidential election, even if Trump does not, and said: “I am not going to speculate on fifteen ‘yes’ there.”
Some of Pompeo’s most irritating exchanges were with high-ranking Democrat on the committee, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who accused the secretary of “failing to take action when evidence emerged that Russia was paying rewards for killing troops Americans. ”
“Senator, I’m going to be more careful about intelligence than you are,” Pompeo said. “I will tell you that, make no mistake about it: the right people have been aware of every threat to our soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan.”
Menéndez asked how Pompeo would have reacted “to such behavior by a Democratic president if he were sitting in his old seat in the House of Representatives? Would he be fine with a president who abandoned our troops without even raising this with the Kremlin?”
Unsupported
“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I would have done if I was still in the House of Representatives. Today I am very focused on my job as Secretary of State,” Pompeo replied.
The top US diplomat said Russia is concerned about the administration’s announcement on Wednesday that it will withdraw some 12,000 soldiers from Germany, a decision that sparked bipartisan condemnation and criticism from former top military officials.
But Pompeo insisted that he had seen comments from Russia that “they saw the actions we took as threatening, because we will have soldiers deployed closer to the Russian border.” Under the administration plan, some US troops will be transferred from Germany to Belgium and Italy. Neither seemed willing to approach Russia.
Some questions touched on less recent events.
At Thursday’s hearing, when Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia put pressure on the top US diplomat about Yovanovitch, Pompeo remained evasive.
“I did not interact with Ambassador Yovanovitch,” Pompeo said, adding that he was “confident that every action we took with Ambassador Yovanovitch was completely appropriate.”
Pompeo declined to say if he was seeking clarification from Trump about his threat, delivered during his famous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that Yovanovitch “was going to go through some things.”
At the end of the interrogation, the exchange heated up, and after Pompeo criticized Kaine for “stupidity” in his question line, Kaine reprimanded Pompeo for his expression and tone.
“You might think these questions are silly. But when someone works their entire career for the State Department, and is smeared with lies and says goodbye for no reason, send a message that could not be clearer to other officials in the Department of State”. Kaine said. “I don’t think it’s silly for Maria Yovanovitch and the people who work for you.”
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