The Inspector General fired by President Donald Trump late Friday was investigating the possibly illegal orders from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a staffer to walk his dog and pick up his dry cleaning, and other personal errands. There are also complaints about the “quasi-official role” Pompeo’s wife (photo) plays in the State Dept., as she did when he was head of CIA. And the White House freely admits Pompeo asked Trump to fire Steve Linick.
But The Washington Post reveals Linick wasn’t just investigating the dog walking – which may have been leaked to throw reporters off the scent of the real scandal.
Linick had “mostly completed” a report on what may have been a false or illegal emergency declaration allowing the fast-tracking of a massive $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. President Trump has strong ties to that country’s leaders and appears to have done them many favors, including protecting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the cover up of the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year, aides on the Foreign Affairs Committee tell me,” says Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent. “Committee Democrats have also learned that the State Department was recently briefed on the IG’s conclusions in that investigation, aides say.”
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Sargent, “Everybody has been trying to figure out why this relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is so strangely close.”
Last year in July Trump vetoed a bill that would have blocked the sale of the weapons to Saudi Arabia – and then turned around and did it anyway.
The dog walking investigation might have been legitimate, and it’s an abuse of taxpayer funds that in any other administration would have led to the Secretary of State’s immediate “resignation.”
But the investigation into billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which some now say might be evidence of corruption, may be the real reason.
No one knows, because Trump fired the Inspector General.
UPDATE –
NBC News confirms: “Linick was also investigating use of emergency declaration last year to sell arms to Saudis over objections of Congress.”
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Mrs. Susan Pompeo arrive in Rome, Italy, on October 1, 2019.
State Department photo by Ron Przysucha via Flickr