The quid pro quos under President Barack Obama didn’t stop with “Quid Pro Joe,” according to Mike Pompeo.
In an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on Wednesday, the secretary of State suggested that President Obama held up weapons for Ukraine because of Hunter Biden, Breitbart reports. Until now, accusations against the Bidens have largely come from President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have accused Joe Biden of pressuring Ukraine to protect his son’s business interests in the country.
For their part, Democrats have attacked Pompeo, who listened in on Trump’s phone call with Ukraine, alleging that he was part of the president’s so-called abuse of power.
Quid pro quo?
For weeks, Pompeo’s State Department has been in revolt as a stream of current and former diplomats have testified about President Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine investigate Joe Biden. Democrats have claimed that Pompeo is implicated in the Ukraine controversy, in which witnesses have alleged President Trump used a shadow foreign policy team centered around Giuliani to pursue his political ends.
But in a Fox interview this week, Pompeo defended President Trump’s phone call while floating his own theory about the Bidens and Ukraine, according to Newsweek. In effect, Pompeo seemed to accuse Obama of the very thing that Democrats have accused of Trump: denying military support to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia — because of an underhanded deal, in this case, involving the Bidens.
“This is the administration that provided defensive weapon systems to Ukraine,” Pompeo said Wednesday. “I couldn’t tell you why. I couldn’t answer if it’s because of Hunter Biden that Barack Obama and Vice President Biden didn’t give defensive weapons systems to Ukraine. They’ll have to answer for that. Maybe I just don’t have the full story.”
The Obama administration decided against providing weapons to Ukraine as the country sought reforms after its revolution, a policy that was actually reversed by Trump, who authorized the sale of Javelin missiles to the country. Democrats have claimed that Trump made military aid to Ukraine conditional on the country’s help in investigating the Bidens and alleged election 2016 election interference favoring Hillary Clinton.
Pompeo’s non-specific claims about the Bidens seem to build on claims that Joe Biden, then Obama’s point man for battling “corruption” in Ukraine, pressured Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor who had investigated an energy company on whose board Hunter sat. The Bidens have vehemently denied the allegations, which many in the media have airily dismissed as a “conspiracy theory.”
Pompeo under fire
Despite resistance from the White House, the Democrats have proceeded with closed-door depositions of current and former Trump administration officials who, Democrats say, have painted a damning portrait of a president who abused his power to pursue his personal ends. In effect, Democrats have claimed, citing testimony from numerous witnesses, that Trump inappropriately empowered Giuliani to pursue a “shadow” foreign policy in Ukraine.
But Pompeo has fired back, telling Fox News and the New York Post on Wednesday that Trump’s phone call with Ukraine was in line with the administration’s official policy on Ukraine, which includes rooting our “corruption.” Trump and his allies have defended his desire to investigate Joe Biden in those terms.
“We’re now reporting on leaks from Democrats who have a mission set here to take down President Trump,” Pompeo told Fox, according to Breitbart. “What I know is I was on the call, I listened to the call. I thought the way the president handled it was appropriate. We were incredibly focused on a couple of simple things with respect to Ukraine strategy. We’ve executed on that.”
After weeks of pursuing Trump in a unilaterally declared impeachment inquiry, Democrats finally voted to authorize the proceeding Thursday. But with allegations against liberal icons like Obama and Biden floating around, only time will tell what their inquiry uncovers.
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