Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revived allegations of corruption against a senior Senate Democrat while defending his decision to oust the State Department’s top watchdog as a long-overdue personnel move.
“I recommended to the president that Steve Linick be terminated,” Pompeo said, referring to the State Department’s outgoing inspector general. “Frankly, should have done it some time ago.”
President Trump announced Linick’s dismissal late Friday, part of a wave of watchdog firings that have left lawmakers on both sides of the aisle demanding an explanation. The targeting of Linick spurred speculation that Pompeo had retaliated against him due to potentially embarrassing investigations, a charge the top U.S. diplomat denied before turning his fire on New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez.
“This is all coming through the office of Sen. Menendez,” Pompeo said, referring to the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t get my ethics guidance from a man who was criminally prosecuted.”
Menendez faced corruption charges during his previous term related to gifts from a friend and campaign donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen. The prosecution led to a mistrial after the jury could not “reach a unanimous decision on any of the charges” in 2017, and Justice Department officials abandoned the prosecution after a judge dismissed seven of 18 charges against him for lack of evidence. “There is no there there,” U.S. District Judge William Wallis wrote of those charges.
Still, Menendez was “severely admonished” by the Senate Ethics Committee.
“His Senate colleagues, bipartisan, said basically that he was taking bribes,” Pompeo said.
The New Jersey lawmaker, who maintained his innocence throughout the process, accused Pompeo of trying to deflect attention from a brewing scandal.
“The president, at Secretary Pompeo’s request, fired the State Department‘s inspector general for no apparent reason at the same time the inspector general was investigating the secretary,” he said in a statement. “Secretary Pompeo now faces an investigation into both this improper firing and into his attempt to cover up his inappropriate and possibly illegal actions. Not surprisingly, he has lashed out at me and others conducting congressional oversight,” he said. “The secretary should focus on answering questions and getting his story straight as to why he wanted to target IG Linick.”
The allegations against Pompeo have been spearheaded by Menendez and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat.
“Reports indicate that Secretary Pompeo personally made the recommendation to fire Mr. Linick, and it is our understanding that he did so because the inspector general had opened an investigation into wrongdoing by Secretary Pompeo himself,” Engel and Menendez said Saturday. “Such an action, transparently designed to protect Secretary Pompeo from personal accountability, would undermine the foundation of our democratic institutions and may be an illegal act of retaliation.”
The statement was an apparent reference to reports that Pompeo has instructed State Department staff to carry out personal tasks on his behalf, but Engel subsequently put an emphasis on Linick’s investigation of a controversial arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Pompeo maintained that he is ignorant of Linick’s work, with “one exception” that he cooperated with.
“I was asked a series of questions in writing … I responded to those questions,” he said, in an apparent reference to questions pertaining to the arms sale. “I did what was right. I don’t know if that investigation is continuing. I don’t know if that investigation was closed out. I don’t have any sense of that.”
