Mike Pompeo defends Trump’s approach to Ukraine amid impeachment probe
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine that is at the centre of an impeachment inquiry.
He rejected allegations it was at best inappropriate or at worst an illegal abuse of power for which Congress should remove President Donald Trump from office.
He did not address Mr Trump’s stated desire for Ukraine to specifically investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, which impeachment investigators are focused on since a whistleblower complaint surfaced last month.
Mr Pompeo criticised the impeachment inquiry as “clearly political” and said the actions of the State Department were aimed solely at improving relations with the new government of Ukraine that took office this spring.
He also said the work of a former special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, was based on the direction of the president to do just that.
Mr Volker was interviewed by congressional investigators on Thursday and turned over text messages between himself and other officials.
Those messages detailed their push to get Ukraine to agree to investigations into an energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat, and 2016 election interference.
In exchange, American officials dangled the offer of a meeting with Mr Trump in Washington for Ukraine’s new president.
“Ambassador Volker worked diligently to create that opportunity.”
Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, has warned about the dangers of Moscow’s intrusions in the American political system.
Mr Pompeo said the administration had an obligation to investigate alleged election interference and ask foreign governments for assistance if needed.
“The administration was incredibly focused on making sure that we worked with Ukraine in a way that was appropriate,” he said.
“It is not only appropriate, it is our duty if we think there was interference in the election of 2016.
In Mr Trump’s July telephone call with Ukraine’s president, he referred to a discredited conspiracy theory that tries to cast doubt on Russia’s role in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and alleges that Ukraine had spread disinformation during the US election.
Separately, on impeachment, Mr Pompeo said the State Department had responded to a congressional subpoena for him to produce Ukraine-related documents. He did not say what that response was.
He had faced a Friday deadline to hand over the documents, but he suggested he had not and would instead move to comply with the subpoena at his own pace.
The former congressman said: “We’ll work through that process. I remember precisely once when I was on that side and we were looking for documents, I remember precisely how long it took for those documents to come across.
“We’re going to be more responsive than the Obama administration was in the years that preceded this particular Congress.”
Mr Pompeo was in the Greek capital on the last leg of a four-nation European tour that has been overshadowed by the impeachment inquiry in Washington.
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