Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Wednesday that he had no idea CIA Director Mike Pompeo had a secret meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and said Pompeo should have been more up front about it when he met with senators last week.
“I can tell you, even in his private conversations with me, he didn’t tell me about his visit to North Korea,” Menendez said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now I don’t expect diplomacy to be negotiated out in the open, but I do expect for someone who is the nominee to be secretary of state, when he speaks with the committee leadership, and when he was asked specific questions about North Korea, to share some insights about such a visit.”
Menendez added that he would not be voting for Pompeo. “I believe the American people deserve better,” Menendez said.
That position is no surprise, as Menendez voted against Pompeo’s nomination to lead the CIA and repeatedly clashed during last week’s confirmation hearing. But the announcement also signaled how Democrats might try to turn Pompeo’s newly-revealed diplomatic meeting with Kim into a liability heading into the vote to confirm him as secretary of state.
On Tuesday, another key Democratic senator, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, announced her opposition to Pompeo’s nomination. Her decision is notable because she was one of only two Democrats on the Foreign Relations panel to vote in favor of Pompeo’s confirmation to lead the CIA. The other, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, likewise opposes Pompeo’s move to the State Department.
Their announcements almost guarantee that Pompeo will lose the committee vote, since Republicans only have a one-vote majority on the panel, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky also opposes him. But that won’t prevent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from bringing his nomination to the Senate floor.
President Trump confirmed Wednesday morning that Pompeo traveled to North Korea to prepare for an expected future meeting between Trump and Kim to discuss the dismantling of the pariah state’s nuclear weapons program.
“Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” the president tweeted. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”
Former Obama administration officials suggested that Pompeo’s travel was leaked in a bid to bolster his bid to take over from fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“Here’s a Q: Did the administration leak a ‘Top Secret’ CIA mission on the same day several Senators came out against Pompeo as Secretary of State to make him seem more ‘diplomatic?’” former national security council spokesman Ned Price tweeted. “Sure feels like it.”
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who sits on the Intelligence Committee that oversees Pompeo’s work in his current role as CIA chief, defended the trip. “I was not aware in advance,” Lankford allowed. “But he’s a good one to be able to do it. Obviously, he’s someone being tapped by the President to work for the State Department. He has good experience there obviously working with CIA at this point. So I think he’s the best choice to be able to do the advance work.”
