Well that’s just weird
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and then-National Security Adviser John Bolton held a meeting with Donald Trump in August and tried to convince him to release U.S. military aid to Ukraine. This revelation helps make Trump look even more guilty, and it helps boost the Democrats’ legal push to force these three gentlemen to testify against Trump.
Here’s the big question: who leaked the news of the meeting, and why now? Whoever leaked this is trying to force these three guys to testify. And yet, the leak itself almost had to have come from one of the three of them. Perhaps Esper, who has never really been a Trump guy, leaked it because he wants to do the right thing by testifying. But if so, why not just testify? Then there’s Bolton, who’s currently fighting a court battle to try to avoid testifying, so it wouldn’t make sense that he would leak it.
That leaves us with Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist who’s in this scandal up to his eyeballs. Here’s the weird part. On the same day someone told the New York Times about the Ukraine meeting, Pompeo had his pal Robert O’Brien announce on television that Pompeo isn’t going to resign and run for the Senate. It was always inevitable that Pompeo was going to end up deciding not to run, as the Republicans would rather have a Senate candidate in Kansas who doesn’t have the Ukraine scandal hanging over his head. The Democrats face a steep challenge winning in Kansas in 2020, but if Pompeo is the Republican candidate, it’ll give the Democrats their best chance.
So Pompeo was never going to run. But why announce that now? This is the slowest news week of the year, wedged in between major holidays. No one makes news this week on purpose. And yet two major stories, both involving Pompeo, and one of them definitely leaked by Pompeo, just happened to leak on the same day during this super-slow news week. This comes even as Pompeo is weirdly announcing that he’s heading too Ukraine right now, ostensibly to try to fix Trump’s mess over there. Is this all supposed to be a coincidence?
One possibility is that the New York Times asked Mike Pompeo if he wanted to provide comment for this story, he realized things are about to get particularly ugly for him, and he made the decision not to run for Senate – then headed to Ukraine in a panic. Another possibility is that Pompeo is the one who leaked the meeting, because he wants to be “forced” to testify against Donald Trump, and he’s really in Ukraine right now to help gather evidence against Trump.
Why would Pompeo do the latter? He’s very likely to be indicted and arrested for his criminal role in the Ukraine scandal once Trump is gone. One of the very few ways Mike Pompeo could avoid eventual arrest is to testify against Donald Trump now – particularly on the back of the news that he supposedly tried to corner Trump and convince him to stop committing his Ukraine crimes. If Pompeo is indeed planning to testify against Trump in early 2020, it would certainly close the door on any potential Senate run in 2020. Keep an eye on this, because it’s just too weird that these two Pompeo stories surfaced simultaneously, and it’s almost certain that they’re connected.
