Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believed that Rudy Giuliani was hampering U.S. interests in Ukraine, a key U.S. diplomat told House investigators.
Ambassador Kurt Volker, whose two-year tenure as the State Department’s point-man for the war in Ukraine ended with his resignation last month, testified this month that Giuliani’s search for evidence implicating Biden in a corruption scandal was a burden on his own efforts to advance U.S. policy in Ukraine. Volker told lawmakers that he briefed Pompeo on his attempt to rein in Giuliani in August, according to a source familiar with his testimony, and that Pompeo approved.
“I’m glad you’re doing that,” Pompeo told Volker, according to the source familiar with his closed-door Oct. 4 deposition.
That conversation took place after President Trump’s famous conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he urged to work with Giuliani. Pompeo has declined to say what he thought about Giuliani’s efforts. “I have had one consistent policy as the Secretary of State to not talk about internal deliberations inside the administration,” he said in a televised interview on Sunday.
The ongoing impeachment inquiry stems from Giuliani’s search for evidence that Ukrainian officials coordinated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to embarrass a Trump adviser during the 2016 election cycle. Giuliani also wanted Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a perceived front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, based on allegations by a disreputable Ukrainian official. Current and former U.S. officials have faulted Giuliani for interfering with their work.
“Our view was that the men and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine,” Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the president’s hand-picked envoy to the European Union, told lawmakers last week.
Both Volker and Sondland portrayed Giuliani as poisoning Trump’s view of Ukraine at a critical juncture in Zelensky’s attempt to fight corruption in the former Soviet vassal state while fending off Russian aggression. “President Trump had a deeply rooted negative view on Ukraine,” Volker told House lawmakers in the prepared statement for his closed-door testimony. “He was clearly receiving other information from other sources, including Mayor Giuliani, that was more negative, causing him to retain his negative view.”
Pompeo also was frustrated that Giuliani caused Trump to have a negative view of Ukraine, Volker testified. That negative perception culminated in Trump urging Zelensky to work with Giuliani during a congratulatory phone call in which the new Ukrainian leader told Trump that he hoped to purchase another batch of anti-tank weapons. That sale was approved, but the conversation — and a brief hold on the funding — sparked a whistleblower complaint that lit the fuse on the impeachment inquiry.
Pompeo, who was on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, has avoided praising or condemning Giuliani’s role. “Private citizens often are part of executing American foreign policy,” Pompeo said Sunday on ABC News. “There’s lots of good, patriotic Americans who are working trying to deliver and assist the State Department, the Department of Energy — all of the elements of American power — to get good outcomes for the American people.”
Volker testified that he believed Pompeo was glad Volker was working to manage Giuliani because that freed the top diplomat to focus on other brewing crises, such as the summer-long clash with Iran, and the Taliban talks to end the war in Afghanistan.
Pompeo, asked Sunday to comment on other testimony, protested that House Democrats have excluded his team from the depositions. “I frankly wish that State Department lawyers were being permitted in the room to hear testimony from State Department officials,” he said. “I can’t comment on what they’re saying because I have not been permitted to either have a lawyer present or to see the recorded transcripts or the translations of what was said in those.”
