A top Senate Democrat has asked special counsel Robert Mueller if he put any restrictions on what CIA Director Mike Pompeo can say in public about his interview with Mueller, after Pompeo refused to talk about it during a Senate hearing this week.
“I would like to know whether there is any prohibition on Director Pompeo answering my questions,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Mueller in a Thursday letter released Friday afternoon.
Pompeo said at the hearing that he met with Mueller as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, but declined to say more.
“I asked him about those conversations, and he refused to answer the questions,” Menendez wrote. “When I asked Director Pompeo whether you had instructed him not to speak about this conversation with you, he replied that he would not speak about the conversation while the investigation is ongoing.”
Menendez said he wanted an answer by Friday, April 13.
Mueller hadn’t acknowledged the request at the time Menendez’s team published the letter. “He has not responded yet,” a spokesman for the Foreign Relations Committee Democrats told the Washington Examiner.
Pompeo may need Democratic support to be confirmed as the nation’s top diplomat, as Republicans hold just a 51-49 seat majority and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has announced his plan to oppose the CIA chief’s job change. Thursday’s hearing suggested that those Democratic votes, if any, will be few and far between.
Democrats repeatedly demanded he comment on the Mueller investigation and faulted him for demurring on questions pertaining to ongoing policy debates within the administration.
“You want me to put my faith in you, but I can’t do that blindly,” Menendez said at one point during a discussion of what Pompeo might recommend regarding U.S. policy towards the Iran nuclear deal. “I need to have some sense of what you’ll be advocating, even if it’s not what the president decides.”
