Pompeo Letter: ‘Nasty Insinuation’ He Fired IG for Personal Reasons ‘Misleading’
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun sent three letters to Congress late Thursday rejecting allegations that the State Department’s Inspector General had been fired because he was investigating alleged misuse of State Department resources by Pompeo and his wife.
In his letter responding to Congress, Pompeo gets personal with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in the very first paragraph.
Taking a sideways swipe at Engel’s primary contest, Pompeo writes: “I hear you’ve been busy in your District, so let me get you up to speed on what’s been going on with your Committee.” A footnote references an article that states Engel is “fighting for his political survival.”
Pompeo asserts in the letter that none of his top aides ever informed him that independent watchdog Steve Linick was investigating him.
Engel’s suggestion that he fired Linick because the IG was about to investigate and uncover his own impropriety is a “nasty insinuation” aimed at “misleading” the American people, writes Pompeo.
“Because I had no knowledge of this alleged work by the inspector general at the time I recommended to the president that Mr. Linick be removed, it is not possible that Mr. Linick’s work on this matter could have provided a retaliatory motivation for my recommendation,” Pompeo wrote.
In his letter to Engel, Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun, who had so far managed to stay mostly above the political fray, confirms this.
While fired IG Linick states that Pompeo’s top aides Brian Bulatao, Lisa Kenna & John Sullivan all knew that he was seeking documents as part of a probe into possible misuse of State resources by Pompeo and his wife, Susan, Biegun asserts that none of Pompeo’s aides told him about the probe.
The committee “wrongly concluded, without any evidence or corroboration, that Secretary Pompeo must have been aware of the inspector general’s work on this matter at the time that he recommended he be removed from his position,” Biegun wrote. “This conclusion is entirely false.”
“We can confirm unequivocally that, to the extent that any one of us were made aware of any ‘investigation’ of this nature, none of us briefed Secretary Pompeo on, or otherwise discussed with him, this purported ‘investigation’ at any time before the President removed Mr. Linick from his position,” writes Biegun.
The real reason Linick was removed was because he was guilty of “strange and erratic behavior” and had failed to do his job over the course of several months, writes Pompeo.
According to current and former State Department employees who spoke with TAC, Linick had tangled with many of Trump’s political appointees inside State and would leak damaging stories about them to Foreign Policy magazine.
But Pompeo didn’t intervene until Linick started to investigate Pompeo himself, and his wife, Susan.
In his letter to Engel, Biegun says he should stop “perpetuating this false conclusion” that Pompeo knew about the personal investigations.
So why did Pompeo fire Linick?
Pompeo said he is willing to allow Under Secretary of State for Management Brian Bulatao to testify about the circumstances of Linick’s firing to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 22 or 23.
He also said he regrets that Engel has allowed his staff to “take over” the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“I need an inspector general working every day to improve State Department operations and efficiency,” Pompeo wrote in one letter to committee chairman Engel. “Mr. Linick was not that person.”
Included in the letters sent in response to Congress were four pages titled “Three Things Democrats Won’t Tell You About Linick’s Testimony.” The document pulls out selective negative quotes from Linick’s testimony to Congress. The quotes highlight that Linick had emailed drafts of an IG report to his personal account several times, something he is allowed to do during travel.
Pompeo and his aides have accused Linick’s team of leaking to the Daily Beast information about a damaging IG report on alleged political retaliation against career staff. Pompeo has continued to blame Linick for the leak, even though the Pentagon inspector general cleared Linick and his office. In the report, the IG recommended Brian Hook be disciplined for his treatment of career State staff.
Was Linick fired in retaliation for recommending discipline for Hook?
In response to the letters, Engel said he “puzzled why Secretary Pompeo’s letter includes so many errors, but I’m glad that the department is moving toward what the committees requested weeks ago: allowing Mr. Bulatao to speak on the record about the firing of Inspector General Linick.”
“We look forward to hearing from Mr. Bulatao and all the other witnesses involved in this fiasco,” he said.
In addition to investigating Mike and Susan Pompeo’s possible misuse of State funds, Linick, who had been inspector general since 2013, had also opened a review of last year’s $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which Pompeo approved over congressional objections.
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