Mike Pompeo just got a house dropped on him
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been caught up in Donald Trump’s Ukraine whistleblower scandal from the start. His State Department gave Ukraine an extra $141 million at the same time Trump reinstated the original $250 million, in an apparent effort at keeping the scandal from surfacing. In addition, Rudy Giuliani keeps insisting that Pompeo sent him to Ukraine to start with.
Whatever Mike Pompeo’s specific role has been in the Ukraine scandal and subsequent coverup, it’s ugly enough that he may have no way out of this. The House just subpoenaed Pompeo for all the Ukraine-related documents that he has. Here’s the thing. The Trump regime has been defying congressional subpoenas up to this point, figuring that it could delay things in court for months, with no real repercussions. But this one appears different.
The House has made a point of saying this to Mike Pompeo: “Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry.” Obstruction is a big deal. It’s not contempt of Congress. You can be criminally indicted for obstruction and put on trial for it.
In other words, the House is essentially telling Mike Pompeo that unless he cooperates now, he’s going to prison after Donald Trump is gone. Pompeo now has to decide whether he wants to bet his freedom on a Trump pardon. That would be a foolish move, considering that Trump hasn’t pardoned a single one of his co-conspirators up to this point (ask Manafort, Flynn, and Stone), and with Trump now circling the drain, it would be even more difficult for him to try to start pardoning people. So now it’s Pompeo’s move, and he has just days to decide what he wants the rest of his life to be like.
