Pompeo Holds Firm Amid Vindman’s Blockbuster Ukraine Testimony: Trump Handled Call Appropriately

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tonight dismissed the concerns raised by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman about President Donald Trump‘s call with the president of Ukraine.

After discussing the successful raid that took out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Fox News’ Martha MacCallum asked Pompeo about the “parade of State Department officials” testifying through Congress and the testimony yesterday from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who reportedly testified that some key words and phrases were omitted from the Ukraine call transcript, including another reference to Joe Biden and a separate one to Burisma.

“I don’t know what any of the witnesses actually said,” Pompeo responded, “we’re reporting on leaks from Democrats who have a mission set to take down President Trump. What I know is I was on the call, I listened to the call. I thought the way the president handled it was appropriate. We were incredibly focused on a couple of simple things with respect to Ukraine strategy, we’ve executed on that.”

“I couldn’t tell you why, I couldn’t answer if it’s because of Hunter Biden that Barack Obama and Vice President Biden didn’t give defensive weapons systems to Ukraine, they’ll have to answer for that,” Pompeo continued. “Maybe I just don’t have the full story.”

MacCallum brought up concerns raised by a number of people within the State Department about feeling like there was a two-track policy on Ukraine.

“They sound very disappointed things got pulled away from them, they are all pointing to the common thread of Rudy Giuliani here,” she said.

“My understanding is that every one of these individuals had the same Ukrainian policy that President Trump had. This is a Ukraine policy that wanted to provide javelin weapon systems, we did that,” Pompeo said. “This is Ukraine policy that wanted to ensure Mr. Zelensky had resources he needed to push back against corruption we all know has existed in Ukraine. I actually think the policy every one of my officials was trying to achieve is same one President Trump and I were trying to get the outcome on.”

Bill Taylor testified in his opening statement that he was troubled by how, in addition to the formal channel of U.S. policy-making with respect to Ukraine, there was a second “irregular, informal channel.”

Taylor wrote, “When I first arrived in Kyiv, in June and July, the actions of both the regular and the irregular channels of foreign policy served the same goal — a strong U.S.-Ukraine partnership — but it became clear to me by August that the channels had diverged in their objectives. As this occurred, I became increasingly concerned.”

You can watch above, via Fox News.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/3339uzP