Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on ABC’s This Week program and naturally the whole Ukraine kerfuffle was discussed. Pompeo said some expected stuff. No, we’re not on the brink of war with Iran. No, we’re very unlikely to release the transcript of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. No, Pompeo doesn’t see this a a particularly big deal.
But then there was this
POMPEO: I think I saw a statement from the Ukrainian foreign minister yesterday, said there was no pressure applied in the course of the conversation. I do think — I do think, if Vice President Biden behaved inappropriately, if he was protecting his son and intervened with the Ukrainian leadership in a way that was corrupt, I do think we need to get to the bottom of that, Martha. And I — I hope that we will. I hope that, if Vice President Biden engaged in behavior that was inappropriate, I hope the American people will come to learn that. America can’t have…RADDATZ: We’ve seen no evidence of that yet. But I want to go back to the question.POMPEO: America cannot have our elections interfered with. America cannot have our elections interfered with. And if — if that’s what took place there, if there was that kind of activity engaged in by Vice President Biden, we need to know.
Two interesting points here.
First, Pompeo is not dismissing out of hand the stench of corruption than hangs over Joe Biden links to his ne’er do well kid getting a seat on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company run by one of their economic oligarchs and to Biden’s admitted interference in Ukraine’s judicial process to his son’s benefit. Second, he’s clearly tying Biden’s actions in relation to Ukraine to the efforts by the Obama administration…or at least the faction that was hoping to ride Mrs. Clinton’s more-than-ample-acres-wide coattails to continued power….to aid the Clinton campaign. (See Elizabeth Vaughn’s The Real Foreign Collusion Occurred Between Pro-Clinton Ukrainians And The DNC and U.S. Embassy Pressured Ukrainian Officials To End Investigation Of Soros Group In 2016.) The comment, “America cannot have our elections interfered with. And if — if that’s what took place there, if there was that kind of activity engaged in by Vice President Biden, we need to know,” nearly caused Martha Raddatz to stroke out.
Unlike Trump, Pompeo is not a bomb-thrower. I have to suspect that he has some reason to throw campaign interference into the mix other than mere amusement. Given the role the State Department played in moving the Steele Dossier into the proper channels, I have little doubt that there is more on that angle just waiting to be revealed.