POMPEO2 SoS

SoS 10/18

919 bak

merri ok

might run 2024?

surprisingly dominionist, w/ vpence? scary red calf armageddon shite (shiite?) here?! also fashy

aha // domin theocracy and qanon? ghost dance

attack schiff

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/mcconnell-treason/

see cufi xian zion

recall neo-con wolfie lust for "aircraft carrier" in ME

xian USAID, declares his leadership biblical? hu rights BS?

Jerusalem capitol, settlements legal

1/20 new tag PPP pence, pompeo perry, ie high ranking trump dominionist/ paleo-catholic

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pension? endorse?

===

MMA Benny Johnson claims Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo were “colluding with the deep state to destroy” Trump with COVID

05/06/25

Oct 11, 2023 — Liberty University has announced the appointment of 70th US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as Distinguished Chair of the Helms School of Government.

What Does Mike Pompeo Do For A Living After Trump's First Term?

After the end of Trump's first administration in January 2021, Mike Pompeo joined the conservative think tank, The Hudson Institute, as a distinguished fellow. The think tank is based in Washington, DC. In February 2021, he founded the Champion American Values PAC (CAVPAC), which aimed to advance "the conservative principles upon which America was founded."

Mike Pompeo published a memoir based on his tenure in the Trump administration, in partnership with HarperCollins, titled 'Never give an inch: Fighting for the America I love" in January 2023. The same year, he joined the board of directors of an Israeli counter-disinformation company, Cyabra. In October 2023, the 61-year-old became Of-counsel to Texas-based federal criminal defense law firm Oberheiden, P.C.

i get bolton but why him?

mma

February 5, 2025, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered

EMILY COMPAGNO (CO-HOST): In a nexus between this conversation and our prior one, I think, respectfully to the president, it is a travesty that the security detail of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo was deactivated. I think it's a travesty that after they swore retribution, additional retribution, against all of our officials, including Mike Pompeo, for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, additional retribution in September 2020 — we talk about where our tax dollars go. It is not about extinguishing expenditures altogether; it is about the appropriate stewardship. And as we warn Iran about the might that the United States of America is, that includes a protection around our elected officials and our patriots who have saved American lives by taking bold steps against those terrorist thugs and against a terrorist, dictatorial state. So to me, I hope, Mr. President, you reinstate the security detail among others

===

the hill

At the end of January, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked security details for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Dr. Anthony Fauci— despite ongoing, credible threats against their lives.

“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” Trump asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something happened to any of them, Trump replied, “Certainly I would not … They made a lot of money. They can hire their own security.” The president offered to give them the phone numbers of “some good security companies.”

A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled the security detail protecting retired Gen. Mark Milley and ordered an inquiry to determine if he should be demoted.

Combined with his pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters and convicted seditious conspirators, and the cancellation of security clearances for dozens of his political adversaries, Trump’s actions have launched what could be called the “imperious presidency.”

The federal government has an obligation to protect its public servants from job-related threats. One can hope that all Americans will condemn putting these men in harm’s way because they corrected, criticized or condemned their former boss.

Think Tanks cashing in on dark money; orgs keep funding sources a secret: Interview

John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, had a well-deserved reputation as a brutally candid, hard-to-like foreign policy hawk. He replaced Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018. At the time, Trump praised Bolton as a patriot, “well-respected and a tough cookie,” saying he “has strong views on things but that’s okay.”

Bolton helped craft the administration’s hard line on Iran, but he opposed what he regarded as Trump’s dovish overtures to North Korea and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor was he a fan of the president’s “we’ll have to see response” to questions about whether the U.S. would recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Trump fired Bolton in 2019. “He wasn’t liked at all and wasn’t respected very much,” Trump declared in 2020. “Personally, I thought he was crazy.”

By then, Bolton was casting doubt on Trump’s fitness to be president. He subsequently Trump “incapable of advanced thinking” and as a way of life.”

In 2022, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged with plotting to murder Bolton. An Iranian was subsequently charged (in absentia) for offering $300,000 to kill Bolton. Officials in two federal agencies recently informed Bolton that the threat level is just as strong now as it was then.

Mike Pompeo, a member of the House from 2011 to 2017, occupied high-level positions throughout Trump’s first administration. When Trump elevated Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of State, the president declared he had “earned the praise of members of both parties” and would “do a fantastic job.”

Pompeo briefly considered running for president in 2024, criticized Trump for mishandling classified documents and “staring into the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood,” and promised voters “solutions, not tweets.” He still went on to endorse the former president and called Trump “a great guy” on the eve of the 2024 election.

Iran has vowed retaliation against Pompeo for helping plan the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Informed that Trump had revoked security details for members of his administration, a CIA officer predicted that “somebody is going to get killed.” Pompeo explained the order as “a reflection of Trump’s character or lack thereof.”

Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Freedom in 2007 as the architect of the President’s Emerging Plan For AIDS Relief, which saved millions of lives by distributing drugs in Africa.

As a member of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci was initially praised by Trump, who said, “He has become a major television star for all the right reasons.” But, while declaring that Trump’s briefings were “helpful,” Fauci corrected misstatements about, for example, the likelihood of COVID-19 disappearing with the onset of warmer weather, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and a claim that 99 percent of cases were harmless.

As Trump Republicans and libertarians condemned mask mandates and lockdowns of public buildings, Trump asserted that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” Before the end of Trump’s term, Fauci had become the administration official whom COVID critics loved to hate.

In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to drag Fauci, his wife and children into the street, beat them to death and set them on fire. Since then, the threats have kept on coming.

Trump appointed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019. A year later, Milley apologized for inserting himself into domestic politics by accompanying Trump as he walked through Lafayette Square, ostensibly to clear racial justice protestors, in what turned out to be a photo op.

At his retirement ceremony, Milley declared that he had taken an oath to the Constitution, not “to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Trump has said that Milley committed treason and deserves the death penalty for supposedly going behind his back in dealing with Chinese officials at the end of his administration. And like Bolton and Pompeo, Milley has been threatened with death by Iran for his role in the killing of Soleimani.

Trump has often compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. But he clearly has not yet signed on to the 16th president’s call for “malice toward none” nor for “charity for all,” let alone tried “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

*Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Tags Anthony Fauci Anthony Fauci Donald Trump Iran John Bolton Mark Milley Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo security protection

---

an 10 24

One Republican member of Congress is now openly defending former President Donald Trump's call to use the military as a means of crushing American dissent.

Earlier this week, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he wasn't ruling out deploying the U.S. military against "the enemy from within," which apparently includes "radical left lunatics." Trump even mentioned Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, when discussing "lunatics that we have inside." And on Tuesday morning, CNN host John Berman got Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida) in favor of the former president's proposal.

"Do you think deploying the military against political opponents is something that's responsible to discuss from political candidates?" Berman asked.

"I think that's completely appropriate," Waltz said. "I think it's responsible to discuss deploying the National Guard, which is clearly part of the military, John, to keep our streets safe, to keep rioters out of the street. Everyone is welcome to protest peacefully. but when it exceeds that into violence as it did many times in 2020, then the National Guard was deployed and should be deployed and that has happened in a bipartisan way across many administrations separately."

Notably, Waltz also didn't differ from Trump when asked specifically about Trump describing Schiff as an "enemy from within." The Florida Republican referenced Schiff's censure by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives over his claims about Trump's 2016 campaign getting assistance from Russia, as well as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's unfounded claim that Schiff leaked classified information.

"When you have senior members of the intelligence committee lying and leaking from from compartmented hearings when you have them lying to the public in an open hearing that is detrimental to our republic, to our democracy and public trust in our institutions and that's what he was talking about," Waltz said. "And that is not good for the country."

Waltz also insisted that Trump was put in unnecessary danger by commentators criticizing him over his repeated threats to democracy and the rule of law, suggesting that the two attempts on Trump's life were a byproduct of that rhetoric. Berman pushed back, saying Waltz has "tossed around" words like "socialism" and "Marxism" to describe his Democratic colleagues. Berman also mentioned to Waltz that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley — whom Trump appointed to be the top U.S. military official in 2019 — called the ex-president "fascist to the core."

"Socialism is a longstanding political ideology. That's very different than saying someone is going to be — the world's most God, I mean, Godawful dictator in Hitler, and that clearly is radicalizing people to take action where they believe the ends justify the means to kill him," Waltz said. He additionally defended calling Vice President Kamala Harris a Marxist, saying: "there is Marxism that is underpinning many of her policies, including price controls."

"All I'm saying Congressman, is when Mark Milley says 'no one has ever been as dangerous to the country as Donald Trump, now I realize he's a total fascist,' he's saying that Donald Trump espouses fascist policies," Berman countered. "It's a political ideology. Fascism is a political ideology."

Waltz — who is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army — didn't acknowledge Milley's remarks about Trump. He instead suggested that America was on the brink of "World War Three" and referenced Russia's war on Ukraine and Israel's ongoing military campaigns in Gaza and in Lebanon as evidence of things being "pretty darn dangerous" under President Joe Biden's administration.

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

---

nation mag 2020

TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch

Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label “ring knocker.” (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally to his point of view.”) Last August, the class of 2023 announced theirs: “Freedom Is Not Free.” Mine from the class of 2005 was “Keeping Freedom Alive.” Each class takes pride in its motto and, at least theoretically, aspires to live according to its sentiments, while championing the accomplishments of fellow graduates.

But some cohorts do stand out. Take the class of 1986 (“Courage Never Quits”). As it happens, both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are members of that very class, as are a surprisingly wide range of influential leaders in Congress, corporate America, the Pentagon, the defense industry, lobbying firms, big pharma, high-end financial services, and even security-consulting firms. Still, given their striking hawkishness on the subject of American war-making, Esper and Pompeo rise above the rest. Even in a pandemic, they are as good as their class motto. When it comes to this country’s wars, neither of them ever quits.

Once upon a time, retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute (Class of ’75), a former US Ambassador to NATO and a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, taught both Esper and Pompeo in his West Point social sciences class. However, it was Pompeo, the class of ’86 valedictorian, whom Lute singled out for praise, remembering him as “a very strong student—fastidious, deliberate.” Of course, as the Afghanistan Papers, released by The Washington Post late last year, so starkly revealed, Lute told an interviewer that, like so many US officials, he “didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking in Afghanistan.” Though at one point he was President George W. Bush’s “Afghan war czar,” the general never expressed such doubts publicly and his record of dissent is hardly an impressive one. Still, on one point at least, Lute was on target: Esper and Pompeo are smart, and that’s what worries me (as in the phrase “too smart for their own good”).

Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist, had particularly hawkish views on Russia and China before he ever took over at the Pentagon and he wasn’t alone when it came to the urge to continue America’s wars. Pompeo, then a congressman, exhibited a striking pre–Trump era foreign policy pugnacity, particularly vis-à-vis the Islamic world. It has since solidified into a veritable obsession with toppling the Iranian regime.

Their militarized obsessions have recently taken striking form in two ways: The secretary of defense instructed US commanders to prepare plans to escalate combat against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, an order the mission’s senior leader there, Lt. Gen. Robert “Pat” White, reportedly resisted; meanwhile, the secretary of state evidently is eager to convince President Trump to use the Covid-19 pandemic, now devastating Iran, to bomb that country and further strangle it with sanctions. Worse yet, Pompeo might be just cunning enough to convince his ill-informed, insecure boss (so open to clever flattery) that war is the answer.

The militarism of both men matters greatly, but they hardly pilot the ship of state alone, any more than Trump does (whatever he thinks). Would that it were the case. Sadly, even if voters threw them all out, the disease runs much deeper than them. Enter the rest of the illustrative class of ’86.

IFrame Content

As it happens, Pompeo’s and Esper’s classmates permeate the deeper structure of imperial America. And let’s admit it, they are, by the numbers, an impressive crew. As another ’86 alumnus, Congressman Mark Green (R-TN), bragged on the House floor in 2019, “My class [has] produced 18 general officers…22-plus presidents and CEOs of major corporations…two state legislators…[and] three judges,” as well as “at least four deans and chancellors of universities.” He closed his remarks by exclaiming, “Courage never quits, ’86!”

Current Issue

However, for all his gushing, Green’s list conceals much. It illuminates neither the mechanics nor the motives of his illustrious classmates; that is, what they’re actually doing and why. Many are key players in a corporate-military machine bent on, and reliant on, endless war for profit and professional advancement. A brief look at key ’86ers offers insight into President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex in 2020—and it should take your breath away.

The West Point Mafia

The core group of ’86 grads cheekily refer to themselves as “the West Point Mafia.” And for some, that’s an uplifting thought. Take Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven. He says that he’s “someone who sleeps better at night knowing that those guys are in the positions they’re in.” Of course, he’s an ’86 grad, too.

Back when I called the academy home, we branded such self-important cadets “toolbags.” More than a decade later, when I taught there, I found my students still using the term. Face facts, however: those “toolbags,” thick as thieves today, now run the show in Washington (and despite their busy schedules, they still find time to socialize as a group).

Given Donald Trump’s shady past—one doesn’t build an Atlantic City casino-and-hotel empire without “mobbing it up“—that “Mafia” moniker is actually fitting. So perhaps it’s worth thinking of Mike Pompeo as the president’s latest consigliere. And since gangsters rarely countenance a challenge without striking back, Lieutenant General White should watch his back after his prudent attempt to stop the further escalation of America’s wars in Iraq and Iran in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Worse yet for him, he’s not a West Pointer (though he did, oddly enough, earn his Army commission on the very day that class of ’86 graduated). White’s once promising career is unlikely to be long for this world.

In addition to Esper and Pompeo, other Class of ’86 alums serve in key executive branch roles. They include Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Joseph Martin, the director of the Army National Guard, the commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, the deputy commanding general of Army Forces Command, and the deputy commanding general of Army Cyber Command. Civilian-side classmates in the Pentagon serve as: deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy, and environment; a civilian aide to the secretary of the Army; and the director of stabilization and peace operations policy for the secretary of defense. These Pentagon career civil servants aren’t, strictly speaking, part of the “Mafia” itself, but two Pompeo loyalists are indeed charter members.

Pompeo brought Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Butalao, two of his closest cadet friends, in from the corporate world. The three of them had, at one point, served as CEO, CFO, and COO of Thayer Aerospace, named for the “father” of West Point, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, and started with Koch Industries seed money. Among other things, that corporation sold the Pentagon military aircraft components.

Brechbuhl and Butalao were given senior positions at the CIA when Pompeo was its director. Currently, Brechbuhl is the State Department’s counselor (and reportedly Pompeo’s de facto chief of staff), while Butalao serves as under secretary for management. According to his official bio, Butalao is responsible “for managing the State Department on a day-to-day basis and [serving as its] Chief Operating Officer.” Funny, that was his exact position under Pompeo at that aerospace company.

Still, this Mafia trio can’t run the show by themselves. The national security structure’s tentacles are so much longer than that. They reach all the way to K Street and Capitol Hill.

From Congress to K Street: The Enablers

Before Trump tapped Pompeo to head the CIA and then the State Department, he represented Wichita, Kansas, home to Koch Industries, in the House of Representatives. In fact, Pompeo rode his ample funding from the political action committee of the billionaire Koch brothers straight to the Hill. So linked was he to those fraternal right-wing energy tycoons and so protective of their interests that he was dubbed “the congressman from Koch.” The relationship was mutually beneficial. Pompeo’s selection as secretary of state solidified the previously strained relationship of the brothers with President Trump.

The ’86 Mafia’s current congressional heavyweight, however, is Mark Green. An early Trump supporter, he regularly tried to shield the president from impeachment as a minority member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The Tennessee representative nearly became Trump’s secretary of the Army, but ultimately withdrew his nomination because of controversies that included his sponsoring gender-discrimination bills and commenting that “transgender is a disease.”

Legislators like Green, in turn, take their foreign policy marching orders from the military’s corporate suppliers. Among those, Esper, of course, represents the gold standard when it comes to “revolving door” defense lobbying. Just before ascending the Pentagon summit, pressed by Senator Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation hearings, he patently refused to “recuse himself from all matters related to” Raytheon, his former employer and the nation’s third-largest defense contractor. (And that was even before its recent merger with United Technologies Corporation, which once employed another Esper classmate as a senior vice president.) Incidentally, one of Raytheon’s “biggest franchises” is the Patriot missile defense system, the very weapon being rushed to Iraq as I write, ostensibly as a check on Pompeo’s favored villain, Iran.

Less well known is the handiwork of another ’86 grad, longtime lobbyist and CNN paid contributor David Urban, who first met the president in 2012 and still recalls how “we clicked immediately.” The consummate Washington insider, he backed Trump “when nobody else thought he stood a chance” and in 2016 was his senior campaign adviser in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania.

Esper and Urban have been close for more than 30 years. As cadets, they served in the same unit during the Persian Gulf War. It was Urban who introduced Esper to his wife. Both later graced The Hill’s list of Washington’s top lobbyists. Since 2002, Urban has been a partner and is now president of a consulting giant, the American Continental Group. Among its clients: Raytheon and 7-Eleven.

It’s hard to overstate Urban’s role. He seems to have landed Pompeo and Esper their jobs in the Trump administration and was a key go-between in marrying class of ’86 backbenchers and moneymen to that bridegroom of our moment, The Donald.

Greasing the Machine: The Moneymen

Another ’86er also passed through that famed military-industrial revolving door. Retired Col. Dan Sauter left his position as chief of staff of the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command for one at giant weapons maker Lockheed Martin as business developer for the very systems his old unit employed. Since May 2019, he’s directed Lockheed’s $1.5 billion Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program in Saudi Arabia. Lockheed’s THAAD systems have streamed into that country to protect the kingdom, even as Pompeo continually threatens Iran.

If such corporate figures are doing the selling, it’s the Pentagon, naturally, that’s doing the buying. Luckily, there are ’86 alumni in key positions on the purchasing end as well, including a retired brigadier general who now serves as the Pentagon’s principal adviser to the under secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics.

Finally, there are other key consultants linked to the military-industrial complex who are also graduates of the class of ’86. They include a senior vice president of Hillwood—a massive domestic and international real estate development company, chaired by Ross Perot Jr.—formerly a consultant to the government of the United Arab Emirates. The Emiratis are US allies in the fight against Pompeo’s Iranian nemesis and, in 2019, awarded Raytheon a $1.5 billion contract to supply key components for its Air Force missile launchers.

Another classmate is a managing partner for Patriot Strategies, which consults for corporations and the government but also separately lands hefty defense contracts itself. His previous “ventures” included “work in telecommunications in the Middle East…and technical security upgrades at U.S. embassies worldwide.”

Yet another grad, Rick Minicozzi, is the founder and CEO of Thayer Leader Development Group (TLDG), which prides itself on “building” corporate leaders. TLDG clients include: 7-Eleven, Cardinal Glass, EMCOR, and Mercedes-Benz. All either have or had ’86ers at the helm. The company’s CEO also owns the Thayer Hotel located right on West Point’s grounds, which hosts many of the company’s lectures and other events. Then there’s the retired colonel who, like me, taught on the West Point history faculty. He’s now the CEO of Battlefield Leadership, which helps corporate leaders “learn from the past” in order to “prepare for an ever-changing business landscape.”

A Class-wide Conflict of Interest

Don’t for a moment think these are all “bad” people. That’s not faintly my point. One prominent ’86 grad, for instance, is Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, the deputy of Army Futures Command. He was my brigade commander at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 2009 and I found him competent, exceptionally empathetic, and a decidedly decent man, which is probably true of plenty of ’86ers.

So what exactly is my point here? I’m not for a second charging conspiracy or even criminal corruption. The lion’s share of what all these figures do is perfectly legal. In reality, the way the class of ’86 has permeated the power structure only reflects the nature of the carefully crafted, distinctly undemocratic systems through which the military-industrial complex and our political world operate by design. Most of what they do couldn’t, in fact, be more legal in a world of never-ending American wars and national security budgets that eternally go through the roof. After all, if any of these figures had acted in anything but a perfectly legal fashion, they might have run into a classmate of theirs who recently led the FBI’s corruption unit in New Jersey—before, that is, he retired and became CEO of a global security consulting firm. (Sound familiar?)

And that’s my point, really. We have a system in Washington that couldn’t be more lawful and yet, by any definition, the class of ’86 represents one giant conflict of interest (and they don’t stand alone). Alums from that year are now ensconced in every level of the national security state: from the White House to the Pentagon to Congress to K Street to corporate boardrooms. And they have both power and a deep stake, financial or otherwise, in maintaining or expanding the (forever) warfare state.

They benefit from America’s permanent military mobilization, its never-ending economic war footing, and all that comes with it. Ironically, this will inevitably include the blood of future West Point graduates, doomed to serve in their hopeless crusades. Think of it all as a macabre inversion of their class motto in which it’s not their courage but that of younger graduates sent off to this country’s hopeless wars that they will never allow to “quit.”

Speaking of true courage, lately the only exemplar we’ve had of it in those wars is Gen. “Pat” White. It seems that he, at least, refused to kiss the proverbial rings of those Mafia men of ’86.

But of course, he’s not part of their “family,” is he?

---

[Financial Times

Nippon Steel hires Mike Pompeo in lobbying push for $15bn US Steel bid

Nippon Steel has hired Donald Trump's former secretary of state Mike Pompeo to help lobby for its controversial $14.9bn bid for US Steel.

Jul 21, 2024](https://www.ft.com/content/3519e48d-07d7-449b-a766-6b3ef74db84a)

[

Responsible](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pompeo-trump-plan-ukraine/)

BGR urban?

WSJ omits major Pompeo conflict of interest in 'Trump Peace Plan' | Responsible Statecraft

ggl 10 24

Mike Pompeo

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Mike_Pompeo

Michael Richard Pompeo is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ...

Rex Tillerson · ‎Brian Bulatao · ‎Ulrich Brechbuhl · ‎Stephen Biegun

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'I was on the phone call' with Trump and Ukrainian President

Congress.gov

https://congress.gov › meeting › house › documents

PDF

(CNN)US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted Wednesday that he was on the July 25 phone call in which President Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President ...

3 pages

Mike Pompeo | Donald Trump is the right person to once ...

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1562 likes, 118 comments - mikepompeo86 on April 10, 2024: "Donald Trump is the right person to once again be President of the United States ...

Mike Pompeo in full speech at 2024 RNC: Trump ...

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204.6K+ views · 2 months ago

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THIS LIVE VIDEO HAS NOT BEEN FACT-CHECKED BY THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, USA TODAY OR THE USA TODAY NETWORK.

Michael R. Pompeo - People - Department History

Office of the Historian (.gov)

https://history.state.gov › departmenthistory › pompeo-m...

Michael R. Pompeo was sworn in as the 70th Secretary of State on April 26, 2018. He previously served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorses Trump in ...

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Jul 18, 2024 — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at the Republican National Convention to endorse former President Donald Trump for reelection, ...

Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) · X

X (Twitter)

https://twitter.com/mikepompeo

Allowing unknown drones over a military base is an alarming failure that could have a disastrous impact on our national security.

Our service-members—and every American—deserves better than the weak leadership that allowed this.

www.wsj.com/politics/na…

Posted on X · 18 hours ago

At @ACLJ, I explain how, in the year after 10/7, our leaders’ indecision and weakness has reinforced the global narrative of American decline.

Here’s why this is so dangerous.

aclj.org/israel/pompeo-…

Posted on X · 22 hours ago

Happy Columbus Day!

We should all celebrate and be thankful for the remarkable achievements of Christopher Columbus and Italian-Americans.🇺🇸🇮🇹

Posted on X · 1 day ago

"Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

John 5:7-8

#SundayScripture ✝️

Posted on X · 2 days ago

I am proud to endorse @NunnforCongress. He’s an Air Force combat veteran with a proven track record of success. We need veterans leading the way in Congress who understand duty, sacrifice, and what's at stake for America’s national security.

Join me and support Zach here:…

Posted on X · 3 days ago

View on X

WATCH: Mike Pompeo speaks at 2024 Republican ...

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https://www.pbs.org › newshour › politics › watch-mik...

Jul 18, 2024 — Pompeo also lashed out at Biden for the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan and blamed him for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Gaza's ...

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Surprise! The former Secretary of State and his co-writer could financially gain from this pro-Ukraine proposal.

.Jul 29, 2024

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.Apr 10, 2020

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Pentagon advisor: US support for Israel was due to money from ‘Israeli lobby’

A new senior Pentagon adviser repeatedly said that US support for Israel was due to money from the "Israeli lobby" and accused prominent political figures.

.Nov 18, 2020

Vanity Fair

Surprise: Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” Promise Was a Load of Hot Garbage

Two new reports find that Trump-connected lobbyists are thriving under his administration.

.Jul 6, 2020

MSNBC News

Under Trump, 'The swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C.'

About a year ago, Donald Trump kicked off his re-election campaign in Orlando, and boasted to supports, “We stared down the unholy alliance...

.Jul 6, 2020

The New York Times

TikTok Enlists Army of Lobbyists as Suspicions Over China Ties Grow (Published 2020)

The viral social media app has beefed up its lobbying operation to counter several potential actions in Washington that could threaten the...

.Aug 3, 2020

pfaw gmail 3 24

This week’s Trumptastrophe brings into focus Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who exploited his position to lead a crusade to promote Christian nationalist ideology, and the likelihood that someone just as bad – if not worse – would likely fill that role if Trump were to be reelected:

On March 13, 2018, Trump announced that then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo would be his next Secretary of State. Pompeo eventually became known as the “most Trumpy” of Cabinet members, and possibly the worst secretary of state in history. As the Trump administration came to a close, Douglas Alexander of Harvard Kennedy School’s Future of Democracy Project told the Los Angeles Times that Pompeo “seemed more of a democracy denier than a democracy promoter, more rooted in domestic politics than foreign policy.”

Pompeo’s rise paralleled the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism of the right wing in general and MAGA movement in particular. As a member of Congress, he had demonstrated hostility to religious pluralism, aligning himself with a pastor who delivered a prayer in the state legislature criticizing America for having “worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism.” He had a long relationship with hard-right anti-Muslim activists. Pompeo also used his position to open doors for Ralph Drollinger and his Capitol Ministries to set up operations in foreign capitals designed to “disciple” public officials into Drollinger’s right-wing biblical worldview.

Pompeo affirmed his anti-LGBTQ positions during his confirmation hearing, a foreshadowing of the ways he used his office to resist the advance of legal protections for LGBTQ people around the globe. Right Wing Watch reported at the time on the Trump administration’s relentless efforts to build new anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ equality coalitions, partnering with authoritarian leaders including some of the world’s most repressive regimes. That work built up to the October 2020 launch of the so-called “Geneva Consensus,” which cloaks restrictions on women’s rights and reproductive choice in the language of women’s health. Foreign Policy magazine concluded that the Trump administration’s legacy was “a global alliance against women’s rights.”

Pompeo also created a Commission on Unalienable Rights to advance the vision of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ strategist Robert George. Pompeo declared that religious liberty and property rights were the “foremost” rights, and >said the commission would return U.S. human rights policy to the “Judeo-Christian tradition on which this country was founded.” Human rights advocates were appalled by the commission’s work, with the Council for Global Equality saying that a draft report “hands dictators a roadmap to justify abuses based on their culture, religion and national traditions.” One global human rights advocate called the commission a “gift” to “autocrats across the world.”

Trump’s choice of Mike Pompeo to be his secretary of state is a warning about how terrible a new Trump cabinet is likely to be:

Disregard for Democracy: Pompeo publicly defended Trump’s attempt to hang onto power after losing the 2020 election, telling a reporter it was “ridiculous” to ask whether Trump’s efforts undermined U.S. standing to advocate for free and fair elections oversees. Pompeo also impeded preparations for a transition. Willingness to embrace Trump’s damaging lies about the 2020 election is likely to be a requirement for any administration official.
Contempt for Government Employees: Morale at the State Department plummeted under Pompeo, and career staff left in droves, leaving key positions vacant as the Trump administration came to a close. Pompeo stood by when Trump’s team unfairly savaged U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat. Trump has vowed to obliterate the “deep state,” and his ally Vivek Ramaswamy vowed at CPAC that “we” would fire 75 percent of federal bureaucrats.
Lack of Ethics: Pompeo also demonstrated that he shared Trump’s attitude that ethics rules were for other people. Pompeo and his wife hosted, at taxpayer expense, “elaborate, unpublicized” dinners that other State Department officials believed were “essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions,” as NBC reported. Days before the 2020 Republican National Convention, Pompeo changed department rules—only for himself—so that he could deliver a speech endorsing Trump, which the Office of Special Counsel determined was a violation of law. The State Department Office of Inspector General concluded after Trump left office that Pompeo and his wife had inappropriately used employees more than 100 times to do their personal business, including taking care of their dog and addressing their personal Christmas cards. Pompeo resisted efforts to hold him accountable, disrupting investigations and firing the department’s Inspector General, an internal watchdog position. He also stonewalled congressional investigators.
Hostility to Media: Pompeo followed his boss’s lead when it came to the press. He lashed out against veteran NPR journalist Mary Louise Kelly when he didn’t like the questions she asked, and smeared her by questioning her honesty and knowledge of geography. Trump and his team are vowing to “go after” media outlets whose coverage they don’t like.
Defending Dictators: Pompeo backed the Saudi government after its assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, portraying Khashoggi as a terrorist sympathizer and “activist” rather than a journalist. The recent Conservative Political Action Conference was a love-fest for right-wing authoritarian politicians and a call to give Trump the power he craves.

Trump has made it clear that in a new administration he will surround himself only with people who are absolutely loyal to him and committed to the MAGA movement—people like anti-immigrant extremist Stephen Miller. The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 are pre-vetting thousands of MAGA-minded activists to flood the federal government and overwhelm institutional and legal checks and balances, giving Trump near-dictatorial powers to advance the right wing’s destructive agenda.

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This is unacceptable': Mike Pompeo uses new book to criticize murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi

Maya Boddie

January 24, 2023

Former Secretary of State and potential 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pompeo heavily criticized Jamal Khashoggi in his upcoming book, NBC reports.

Khashoggi, who was based in the U.S., was known to...

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an raw 12 22

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said that former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was wrong to accuse him of covering up data from Hunter Biden's laptop.

In a with Newsmax, Giuliani claimed that Pompeo had "buried" the laptop's hard drive.

“I gave it to Hannity in early 2019, then to John Solomon, then to Mike Pompeo, who also buried it,"Giuliani said."And you should know that now that he’s running for president — and I will tell you the whole story about that at some point. I’ll write it out."

On Tuesday, Pompeo told Real America's Voice host David Brody that he could not "make sense" out of Giuliani's claims.

"Not much to say," Pompeo told Brody. "I feel bad for Rudy. You know, Sean Hannity, John Solomon, Mike Pompeo: noted leftists. Right? I feel bad. I'll leave it there."

The former secretary of state encouraged Giuliani to write out his grievances.

"I can't — I don't know," Pompeo said. "I have no idea. First, he said I gave them everything and then he kind of said, well, I gave them half. I don't know how to respond other than to say that we never covered up anything that was important to American national security."

"I was the secretary of state," he pointed out. "I'm not sure why Hunter Biden's laptop would have been particularly relevant to my particular role at that time. But if he wants to write it out, I'm happy to respond to something once I can make sense of it."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

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am 11 22 post midterm red dribble

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently took aim at the former president but social media users refused to allow him to jump ship.

In fact, some quickly reminded Pompeo of his previous support of former President Donald Trump and how he enabled many of his destructive actions.

According to HuffPost, Pompeo attempted to unearth a previous comment Trump made. Back in 2016, Trump made multiple promises to voters if he were elected. “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning.’”

Pompeo recalled Trump's remarks tweeting, “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing. And so are most Republicans.”

The former Trump official's remarks appear to echo the Republican Party's growing concern about Trump's influence due to the party's poor performance during the 2022 midterm elections.

Although some praised Pompeo for distancing from Trump, HuffPost notes that "critics were quick to remind him of his formerly close relationship with the one-term POTUS and his statement only last month that he’d vote for Trump if he won the GOP nomination again."

"You are complicit, and we will never forget that," one Twitter user wrote.

Others also described Pompeo as a coward due to his refusal to specifically call out the former president. Another user tweeted, "A guy running for president too scared to call Trump out by name."

“'You must move on from Mr. Trump and his losing stench by replacing him with his sycophantic Secretary of State' is quite the pitch!" another user tweeted.

Another user added, "You are not getting out of this that easy, Michael. You were one of the biggest enablers for YEARS. We have not forgotten."

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/pompeo/

praise putin ukr invasion // djt

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an 10 21

no lnx

Now that former President Donald Trump's reign is over, the members of his administration have been forced to take their careers in different directions. So, where are the members of the Trump administration now? According to The Intelligencer, many are doing an array of different things; some of which are synonymous with the questionable activities that long-haunted the Trump administration.

Here's where the top Trump White House officials are now:

1. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still trying to distance himself from the kidnapping of Julian Assange. According to Pompeo, he had nothing to do with it.

Pompeo is adamantly denying any involvement in the plot to kidnap Assange. A report published by Yahoo! News back in September, suggested that Pompeo was livid when he learned Assange divulged U.S. national-security secrets. In fact, the report also claimed that he participated in discussions with members of the Trump administration on how to get retribution.

However, Pompeo is still suggesting the reports are not true. "There's pieces of it that are true," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. "We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, absolutely, yes … We're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that."

2. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been milking his access to the Secret Service.

Thanks to Trump's order extending the use of the Secret Service to members of his administration, Mnuchin has used the professional perk to his benefit. The publication reports that in his first six months out of office, Mnuchin has racked up the highest Secret Service tab. The Washington Post detailed how Mnuchin managed to rack up more than $150,000 in Secret Service expenses.

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home. They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital…

Mnuchin's travels with the Secret Service weren't all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump's presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin is planning to use the $2.5 billion he has raised traveling so he can invest in technology and cybersecurity investments, along with "new forms of content." It remains unclear what Mnuchin specifically describes as "new forms of content" but "many big tech companies are pushing virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and content products and digital gaming."

3. Wilbur Ross is reportedly fantasizing about putting "Trump condos on the moon."

Back in February after the Trump administration transitioned out of the White House, Ross spoke with Bloomberg and shared his upcoming post-government plans; which involve "Trump condos on the moon."

On this particular afternoon, he's sitting in the living room of his 80-year-old home filled with Magrittes and Picassos, sipping a cappuccino, dressed in cashmere sweater, slacks and velvet slippers embroidered with octopuses.

Ironically, it's while ensconced in this paradise of earthly delights that Ross is gearing up to invest in space, among other possibilities. He sees opportunity in extraterrestrial tourism, manufacturing, research and habitation.

Habitation? When asked whether space would be a gold-plated real estate opportunity for Trump, Ross didn't disagree.

"Why not Trump condos on the moon?" he quipped back.

Ross' remarks came just months after the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general released a scathing report about the former Trump official's behavior. According to The Washington Post, the IG's report "concluded that Ross had made many inaccurate statements to federal officials about his assets before taking office, though he did not willfully violate conflict-of-interest laws."

4. Ben Carson is launching a venture similar to Boy Scouts of America.

After departing Washington, D.C., Ben Carson —the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary— launched an organization called the American Cornerstone Institute.Carson's new think tank reportedly places an emphasis on discovering "commonsense solutions to some of our nation's biggest problems."

The American Cornerstone Institute

youtu.be

Carson has also created the Little Patriots program, which is described as a partisan organization for children. Speaking to The Washington Post, Carson explained the organization's initiative. "It will be something like the Boy Scouts," Carson told the publication. "But heavily exposed to the real history of America.

"You probably notice when ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history, they destroy the monuments," Carson explained. "History is what gives you identity."

Elaine Chao contributed to calls for Kroger to be boycotted.

Chao —wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former transportation secretary— worked for several of the country's top corporations prior to her role with the Trump administration. But Intelligencer reports that "she and other Trump Cabinet alums were having a hard time finding cushy landing spots after exiting the administration. 'The feedback was 'It's too soon,' said one of the headhunters involved in an unsuccessful effort to find companies willing to work with Chao."

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Despite her struggles to re-enter the corporate world, Chao was appointed to Kroger's board of directors. But given her history of abusing her power and position with the government, social media users quickly expressed outrage and urged Kroger to drop the former Trump cabinet member from its board.

6. Alex Azar is reportedly conspiring against his former colleagues.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at odds with many of his former colleagues. In fact, several of them including —former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, former Medicare chief Seema Verma, and former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx— have reportedly joined forces to prepare their statements regarding the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19.

According to Politico, they've done so out of caution and concern about Azar possibly using them as "scapegoats" to clear themselves.

"I know the way this goes — everyone has a different perspective," Hahn said in an interview. "I wanted to tell what it was that happened and why it happened and the perspective that we had."

In calls and text messages, members of the group have swapped notes, compared recollections, and sent updates on media requests and interview opportunities, four people with knowledge of the matter said …

And in a nod to their individual battles with Azar, some have jokingly referred to the group in private as "AAA," or Alex Azar Anonymous, according to a person in direct contact with multiple members.

From the looks of it, many Trump administration officials are still conducting shady business as they did while in office.

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921

Newly unredacted records from a whistleblower complaint in the State Department have shed light on more allegations against former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and members of his former staff.

According to documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Pompeo and others were accused of misconduct.

The publication reports: "The alleged misconduct included false or misleading statements to the agency's legal department, misuse of government resources on personal and political activities potentially prohibited by the Hatch Act, verbal abuse of employees by Mike and Susan Pompeo and directives to staff not to communicate in writing in order to evade transparency laws."

The unredacted documents come two years after the redacted version of the whistleblower complaint was filed with the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG is said to have excluded many of the previous redactions in the version of the documents released to CREW.

"The complaint alleges “[s]everal senior career Foreign Service officials who held positions of responsibility within the Executive Secretariat” turned a blind eye to Pompeo’s “questionable activities” and, in some cases, “facilitat[ed]” them, according to CREW.

Employees in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser "expressed concern that some of these activities may have violated [the] Hatch Act or other regulations," but the whistleblower was "unaware that any resolution was reached, potentially because senior officials in the Executive Secretariat repeatedly declined to seek clarification or guidance from [the Office of the Legal Adviser] despite requests from subordinates to do so."

The new documents also detail the aftermath of former Inspector Steve Linick's removal from his post, which was part of a larger Trump-led effort to oust inspectors. The report also indicated that staff members were "stunned" by the directive.

"[T]his is all so surreal three days later. I'm nervous about the future," the OIG employee wrote in a May 18, 2020 email. In a later email, the official added, "I just heard Trump say we needed to get rid of the 'Attorney Generals' as a whole…Oh dear."

CREW has also received other documentation as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit aimed at uncovering information about Pompeo’s attempts to hinder the investigation into the allegations of misconduct against him.

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trump released 5k taliban prisaoners incl guy running cty?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/pompeo-taliban-2654804395/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/pompeo/

pipe-hitters pac ad?

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wow, -->a trend?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/mike-pompeo/

Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is suing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. State Dept. for $1.8 million, to cover what he says are his costs of legal representation during President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial.

"The suit, filed Monday in federal court in the District of Columbia,"

The Washington Post reports, "alleges that Pompeo reneged on his promise that the State Department would cover the fees after Sondland delivered bombshell testimony accusing Trump and his aides of pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate then presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid."

Sondland, a hotelier who donated $1 million to Trump's infamous inaugural committee, was nominated to be the E.U. ambassador in March of 2018.

Because of his intimate knowledge of Trump's Ukraine dealings, including the President's conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during which he blackmailed him, threatening to withhold valuable U.S. military aid if he did not initiate an investigation into Joe Biden, Sondland was called to testify in Trump's first impeachment.

"The complaint alleges that Pompeo told Sondland that government lawyers would not be made available to represent him but that if he hired his own counsel, his attorney fees would be covered by the U.S. government," The Post adds. "Top aides to Pompeo also acknowledged this commitment, the suit alleges, but 'everything changed' after Sondland delivered his testimony alleging a 'quid pro quo' and then refused to resign despite a request from one of Pompeo's most trusted aides, Ulrich Brechbuhl."

The White House attempted to block Sondland's appearance during the impeachment, but ultimately he did testify, delivering damning evidence, substantiating "quid pro quo" allegations.

On February 7, after the Senate refused to convict Trump, he fired Sondland in an act of vengeance, along with Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother. Some experts at the time called Trump's firings illegal.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Mad his wife lost her federally funded indentured servants’: Pompeo slammed for criticizing Biden foreign policy

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/pompeo/

In a shocking tweet barely 24 hours before he will no longer be the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo unleashed a disturbing tweet denouncing "multiculturalism" and claiming it is "not who America is." He also linked multiculturalism to authoritarianism. The outgoing diplomat, a former GOP congressman and former CIA director, is being lambasted on social media for his claim.

The United States is built on the histories and heritages of people from other countries who travel to America. By definition, the United States is a multicultural society: "the presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society."

He has spent the past few weeks pushing out a large number of tweets bragging about what he sees as his successes while attempting to position himself as the logical successor to President Donald Trump. On his last full day in office Secretary Pompeo is being called a "demagogue" and is being accused of white supremacy for his remarks.

"Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is," Pompeo tweeted. "They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker."

Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what… https://t.co/aKWpDCy5iT

— Secretary Pompeo (@Secretary Pompeo)1611066600.0

"This country was built on multiculturalism," CNN's Keith Boykin said, blasting Pompeo. "That's why a descendant of Italian immigrants like you could become Secretary of State. You should know this history. If you don't, you should never have been Secretary of State. If you do and you said this anyway, you're a demagogue."

Here's how others are responding....

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/pompeo-china/

2024 bid? tariff on tomatoes and cotton?

by Cate Cadell and Tony Munroe BEIJING (Reuters) - With hours left in Donald Trump's presidency, China's foreign ministry took aim at its chief U.S. antagonist, "lying and cheating" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and said it would seek cooperation with the incoming administration of Joe Biden. Pompeo, who has unleashed a barrage of measures against China in his final weeks in office, delivered his own parting shot on Tuesday when he announced that the Trump administration had determined that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” by repressing Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. "...

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin have taken part in discussions to invoke the 25th Amendment

Meaghan Ellis

January 08, 2021

As the walls continue to cave in on President Donald Trump's presidency, many of his cabinet members have opted to jump ship. Now, reports have surfaced about the remaining members of the Trump administration who have participated in discussions about invoking the 25th...

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pardon MBS?! an 1220

Trump disputed his intelligence community's conclusion on the Khashoggi murder, and the New York Times reported that Jared Kushner advised the president to ignore the bipartisan outrage and support Prince Mohammed until it passed. A few weeks after the murder, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia, where in a closed-door meeting he reportedly passed the Crown Prince a "road map" meant to help him navigate the scandal.

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75 ppl? jenna?

party-fail': Pompeo under quarantine after throwing sparsely-attended indoor holiday party

Meaghan Ellis

December 16, 2020

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Christmas party at the State Department turned out to be an epic failure with less than 70 out of 900 guests attending. Now, Pompeo is under quarantine after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/pompeo/

900 ppl party

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At what point is this treason?' Pompeo’s claim there will be a ‘smooth transition to a 2nd Trump administration’ draws furor

Alex Henderson

November 10, 2020

With President-elect Joe Biden ahead of President Donald Trump by at least 4.2 million in the vote count after flipping Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states that Trump won in 2016, Democrats as well as some conservatives are calling for Trump to concede — which...

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fashy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/state-department-plan-to-declare-human-rights-groups-anti-semitic-slammed-as-desperate-and-obscene/

no lnx twt

State Department plan to declare human rights groups 'anti-semitic' slammed as 'desperate' and 'obscene'

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams October 22, 2020

The Trump administration is considering designating several preeminent international human rights groups "anti-Semitic" in response to their criticism of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, according to a report published Wednesday.

Politico reports the State Department could as early as this week declare groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam to be anti-Semitic organizations and urge world governments to stop supporting them.

A congressional aide told Politico that the move is backed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly has presidential aspirations and is burnishing his Zionist credentials while serving in what is arguably the most pro-Israel administration ever.

The proposal is highly controversial, however, and has raised eyebrows and ire among career State Department officials including attorneys who argue the potential designation poses serious free speech concerns.

The declaration would likely take the form of a report from Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. It would likely cite the groups' criticism of Israeli policies and actions, as well as their actual or perceived support for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), the peaceful global protest movement for Palestinian rights that is backed by prominent Jewish peace groups. None of the targeted organizations officially support BDS.

Carr's report is expected to cite posts, reports, and media statements by the rights groups criticizing Israel's ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, as well as the exclusively Jewish settler colonization of Palestinian territory, which is also illegal under international law. Both the occupation and settlements have been the subject of dozens of United Nations resolutions, most of them condemning Israel's actions.

Settlement building and expansion have also been called a form of ethnic cleansing and apartheid by international observers, icluding over 400 Jewish scholars and the former U.N. human rights official Richard Falk—who is also Jewish.

It is unclear what, if any, impact the proposed anti-Semitic designation would have on the rights groups. None of the three named groups receive any funding from the U.S. government. All three categorically deny accusations of anti-Semitism.

"AIUSA is deeply committed to fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of hate worldwide, and will continue to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth, and dignity are denied," Amnesty International USA iterim director Bob Goodfellow said in a statement. "We vigorously contest any allegation of anti-Semitism, and look forward to addressing the State Department's attacks in full."

Eric Goldstein, an official with HRW, said in a statement that his organization "fight[s] discrimination in all forms, including anti-Semitism."

"Criticizing government policy is not the same as attacking a specific group of people," added Goldstein. "For example, our critiques of U.S. government policy do not make us anti-American."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/pompeo-faces-another-probe-for-possible-hatch-act-violations-report/

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but the emails oct surprise dirty tricks

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/pompeo/

uS. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is at the helm of an investigation and the Office of Special Counsel will determine if he illegally used his position to bolster politics on behalf of President Donald Trump.

The investigation into Pompeo was sparked from a Fox News interview conducted in early October where he teased about the release of emails connected to former secretary and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton "before the election," per Politico.

"We've got the emails, we're getting them out. We're going to get all this information out so the American people can see it," Pompeo told Fox News's Dana Perino during the interview. "We're doing it as fast as we can. I certainly think there'll be more to see before the election."

During that interview, Pompeo responded to pressure and criticism from Trump who had also discussed the Clinton emails that same day when he said: "They're in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad, actually. I'm not happy about him for that reason. He was unable to get them out. I don't know why. You're running the State Department, you get them out."

Pompeo insisted the release will come before the election, raising questions about whether or not he could be violating the Hatch Act, which "limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs," according to the Office of Special Counsel's website.

"The law's purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation."

In a letter dated Friday, October 16, the watchdog group American Oversight expressed concern about Pompeo's remarks with Election Day just two weeks away. According to the group, Pompeo's remark "warrants an investigation of whether Secretary Pompeo has given directives or orders to State employees in violation of the Hatch Act."

Now, Pompeo is denying any possibility that he would illegally politicize his office. When asked whether he would release Clinton-related emails so close to the upcoming election date, he said: "Releasing emails for the sake of transparency can't possibly be a violation of the Hatch Act. That's a ridiculous question."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-takes-one-more-step-toward-becoming-an-autocrat-and-it-hardly-makes-a-ripple

hunter kos ref NYT

no lnx

NEWS ANALYSIS

Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political Rivals

President Trump took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was ordered by President Trump to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

By David E. Sanger

Oct. 10, 2020

President Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes his presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan.

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Mr. Trump has long demanded — quite publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to pursue political enemies. But his appeals this week, as he trailed badly in the polls and was desperate to turn the national conversation away from the coronavirus, were so blatant that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.

He took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.

“There is essentially no precedent,” said Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush and has written extensively on presidential powers. “We have a norm that developed after Watergate that presidents don’t talk about ongoing investigations, much less interfere with them.”

“It is crazy and it is unprecedented,” said Mr. Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School, “but it’s no different from what he has been saying since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has moved from talking about it to seeming to order it.”

Mr. Trump’s vision of the presidency has always leaned to exercising the absolute powers of the chief executive, a writ-large version of the family business he presided over. “I have an Article II,” he told young adults last year at a Turning Point USA summit, referring to the section of the Constitution that deals with the president’s powers, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don’t even talk about that.”

Now he is talking about it, almost daily. He is making it clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence, that there is already plenty of proof that Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton, among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to Russia — what he calls “the Russia hoax.” And he has pressured his secretary of state to agree to release more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails before the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her four years ago.

Presidential historians say there is no case in modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take political opponents off the field — or has been so eager to replicate the behavior of strongmen. “In America, our presidents have generally avoided strongman balcony scenes — that’s for other countries with authoritarian systems,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian,wrote on Twitter after Mr. Trump returned from the hospital where he received Covid-19 treatment and removed his mask, while still considered contagious, as he saluted from the White House balcony.

Long ago, White House officials learned how to avoid questions about whether the president views his powers as fundamentally more constrained than those of the authoritarians he so often casts in admiring terms, including Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. They have something in common: Mr. Trump’s State Department has criticized all three for corrupting the justice systems in their countries to pursue political enemies.

(Russia, the State Department complained in its 2019 Human Rights report, engaged in a “crackdown on political opposition and other critics before and after presidential elections that Vladimir Putin won.” Turkey, it said the same year, has conducted the “arbitrary arrest and detention of tens of thousands of persons, including former opposition members of parliament.”In recent weeks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been particularly outspoken about the state’s use of a new national security law to arrest activists and political opponents of the Chinese Communist Party.)

Mr. Pompeo has always bristled when reporters have asked him to explain what the world should believe when it reads Mr. Trump’s most authoritarian-sounding tweets. He answers that what distinguishes the United States is that it is a “rule of law” nation, and then often turns the tables on his questioners, charging that even raising the issue reveals that the reporters are partisans, not journalists, intent on embarrassing Mr. Trump and the United States.

But his anger is often wielded as a shield, one that keeps him from publicly grappling with the underlying question: How can Washington take on other authoritarians around the world — especially China, Mr. Pompeo’s nemesis — for abusing state power when the president of the United States calls for political prosecutions and politically motivated declassifications?

“We’ve never seen anything like this in an American election campaign,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state who is now an informal adviser to Mr. Biden. “It reduces our credibility — we look like the countries we condemn for nondemocratic practices before an election.”

“I have worked for nine secretaries of state,” Mr. Burns said. “I cannot imagine any of them intervening in an election as blatantly as what we are seeing now. Our tradition is that secretaries of state stay out of elections. If they wanted to release Hillary Clinton’s emails, they could have done it in 2017, 2018 or 2019. It is an abuse of power by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.”

Another career diplomat who served as both ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, said that what Mr. Trump had ordered is “exactly the kind of behavior I saw so often in authoritarian regimes in many years as an American diplomat.”

“In dealing with Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey, we would have protested and condemned such actions,” he said. “Now it’s our own government that’s engaging in them.”

“The result,” said Mr. Burns, now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “is the hollowing out of our institutions at home, and deep corrosion of our image and influence abroad.”

In the current cases, it is unclear whether Mr. Trump will get his wish — or whether his loyal appointees will slow-walk his requests. There is some evidence they are already looking for escape hatches.

Mr. Pompeo, the administration’s most conspicuous ideologue, Mr. Trump’s most vocal loyalist and a lawyer, was clearly taken aback when the president expressed displeasure, saying he was “not happy” that the State Department had not released emails sent through Mrs. Clinton’s home server.

“You’re running the State Department, you get them out,” the president told Fox Business in an interview this week. “Forget about the fact that they were classified. Let’s go. Maybe Mike Pompeo finally finds them.”

Mr. Pompeo, one of his aides said Saturday, was in a box: The complaint about Mrs. Clinton’s home server was that she was risking exposing classified emails by not using the State Department email system — a system Russia had already infiltrated — yet Mr. Trump was demanding that they be released in full. Just days before, he had announced, over Twitter, that he was using his executive power to declassify all of them, without redactions.

“We’ve got the emails,” Mr. Pompeo responded on Fox News. “We’re getting them out. We’re going to get all this information out so the American people can see it.”

But he also hinted that many of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, mostly those that were stored on the State Department’s own system, have already been posted on the agency’s website, after an unusually diligent effort by the department to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests from Mr. Trump’s supporters. (They are often heavily redacted — to the point of containing no content — despite the president’s order to the contrary.)

“We’re doing it as fast as we can,” Mr. Pompeo told Dana Perino, a Fox News anchor who once served as President Bush’s press secretary. “I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election.”

Mr. Pompeo clearly understands the problem: Even if he makes all of them public, they are unlikely to satisfy the president. Last year, the State Department’s own inspector general found that while Mrs. Clinton had risked compromising classified information, she did not systematically or deliberately mishandle her emails.

William P. Barr may face an even greater challenge in satisfying the president. No attorney general since John N. Mitchell, who served Mr. Nixon and brought conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, bent the Justice Department more in a president’s direction. And Mr. Nixon himself, while urging the I.R.S. to audit political opponents, stopped short of publicly calling for individual prosecutions. Yet in February, Mr. Barr told ABC News that Mr. Trump “has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” At the same time, he complained that the president’s tweets about the Justice Department “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Now, clearly, the president has asked Mr. Barr to act in a criminal case — and not in a quiet phone call. Instead, he did it on Twitter and Fox News, expressing his deep disappointment with his second attorney general, for essentially the same reason he fired his first one, Jeff Sessions: insufficient blind loyalty.

His complaint appears to have been driven by Mr. Barr’s warning to the White House and other officials that there are likely to be no indictments before the election from the investigation being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. Mr. Durham is searching for evidence that the inquiry into Russia was a politically motivated effort to undercut his presidency.

:{:{}:

Mr. Trump says the case is clear-cut. He told Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host to whom he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the last State of the Union address, that Mr. Durham has had “plenty of time to do it.”

:{:{}:

“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crime in the history of our country — then we’ll get little satisfaction, unless I win,” Mr. Trump said on Fox Business.

:{:{}:

“If we don’t win,” he said, “that whole thing is going to be dismissed.”

---

Pompeo doesn't care if you know he's corrupt

Hunter Daily Kos

September 28, 2020

Prior to ex-House Republican Mike Pompeo becoming Trump's secretary of state, it was generally understood that U.S. secretaries of state were not allowed to use the tools of their office for rank partisan politicking. Using government resources to campaign is illegal;...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/journalist-lost-award-for-criticizing-trump-despite-administration-claims-to-the-contrary-officials/

no lnx pix twt

Journalist lost award for criticizing Trump -- despite administration claims to the contrary: officials

Alex Henderson September 25, 2020

In January 2019, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro was notified by the U.S. State Department that she would be receiving its International Women of Courage Award. But the offer was later rescinded after it came to light that Aro had been vehemently critical of President Donald Trump on social media. The State Department and allies of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have denied that Aro’s anti-Trump posts had anything to do with that decision, but a new report by the State Department Inspector General’s Office says otherwise.

“The report tracks how the discovery of the journalist’s remarks worried senior U.S. officials and prompted a decision to withdraw the honor to avoid a possible public relations debacle,” journalist John Hudson reports in the Washington Post. “The report’s release is likely to worsen tensions between the (State) Department’s leadership and the inspector general’s office, which has undergone several shake-ups following the firing of Inspector General Steve Linick in the spring at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.”

Aro was certainly well-deserving of an International Women of Courage Award. The Finnish journalist became the target of death threats and cyberattacks after reporting extensively on Russian troll factories and their propaganda and disinformation efforts.

When the State Department withdrew its offer, its press office said that Aro had been “incorrectly notified”that she was being offered an International Women of Courage Award. The State Department told Congress that Aro “ultimately was not selected to receive the award due to the highly competitive selection of candidates.” And it never acknowledged that Aro’s anti-Trump social media posts had anything to do with it.

But Hudson reports that the State’s Department’s “inspector general ultimately found that the decision to give her the award was not a mistake and was included in a memo approved by Pompeo. The report also noted that the decision to withdraw the award stemmed from the discovery of the social media posts, despite public claims otherwise.”

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey is speaking out about the State Department watchdog’s report and is highly critical of Pompeo.

Judson quotes Menendez as saying, “Secretary Pompeo should have honored a courageous journalist willing to stand up to Kremlin propaganda. Instead, his department sought to stifle dissent to avoid upsetting a president who, day after day, tries to take pages out of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s playbook. The State Department owes Ms. Aro an apology.”

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920 an

omg

Full frontal attack on rule of law’: Trump sanctions top ICC officials probing US war crimes in Afghanistan

us mil in afgan, but also israeli palestine

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http://www.politicalresearch.org/

End Times Antisemitism

Authored by

Steven Gardiner

Today, we see explicitly Christian Zionist organizations and megachurch pastors working with high administration officials such as Mike Pompeo, to justify expanding support for a right-wing, authoritarian Israeli government as the fulfillment of prophecy.

Secondary features

sham’: Top Democrat says IG report on Saudi Arms deal ‘deeply damning’ for Pompeo

Andrea Germanos / Common DreamsAugust 13, 2020

Rep. Eliot Engel, Democratic chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that an inspector general report revealed the State Department’s claim last year of an “emergency” to sell billions of…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/revealed-new-details-in-unredacted-ig-report-throw-into-doubt-mike-pompeos-emergency-timeline-on-weapons-sales-to-saudi-arabia/

https://theconversation.com/pompeos-plan-for-a-hierarchy-of-human-rights-could-serve-to-undermine-them-all-including-religious-freedom-143385

mind you, human rights violations in ICE covid, baby jails and secret police in portland

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/pompeo-panels-human-rights-report-pushes-radical-isolationist-anti-rights-anti-scientific-religious-agenda/

~ Amnesty int'l

Human rights advocates denounced as “dangerous” a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paintsproperty rightsand religious liberty as “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure” while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.

“Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House’s radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda,” Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.

“The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world,” Sippel declared, calling the panel “a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights."

[twt]

"This administration has shown time and time again that their concern with human rights is not about defining rights; it has to do with whose rights are being protected,” she added. “And when it comes to women and girls, and LGBTQI persons, equal protection of our human rights is not guaranteed under this administration, and this commission is just another attempt to deny women and others their rights.”

Critics of the commission, including CHANGE, have soughtto disband it with a lawsuit arguing that the biased views of its members could advance discrimination against certain groups. The panel was announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who unveiled its new report in a speech in Philadelphia Thursday, introduced by Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, who chairs the commission.

The commissioners write in the report that they, “like our fellow Americans, are not of one mind on many issues where there are conflicting interpretations of human rights claims—abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment, to name a few.”

The panel’s treatment of reproductive rights in the report drew a rebuke from Planned Parenthood Action on Twitter Friday:...

jim h

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/meet-the-true-trump-loyalists-influence-peddlers-practicing-the-dark-art-of-bending-government-power/

the Donald is in a funk. He’s been outsmarted by an inert virus. His poll numbers are tanking, and even his demagogic pep rallies are falling flat.

So, who to turn to for political comfort? Why, of course, Trump’s true loyalists: his diehard cadre of Washington’s corporate lobbyists. I don’t merely mean those elites of K-Street and Wall Street who dominate his Cabinet, constituting the official Trump government of, by, and for corporate greed. He also has a “kitchen cabinet.” Operating out of public view, it’s an unofficial collection of highly paid influence peddlers who’re still practicing the dark art of bending government power to the wishes of selfish corporate interests. Each of them is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by brand-name clients — from Amazon to Walgreens — to get favors from Trump. In turn, these little-known lobbyists have now adopted The Donald as their chief client, funneling millions of special-interest dollars into his reelection campaign with the understanding that he’ll keep channeling tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and public dollars to the corporate donors. It’s the Washington money-go-round, merrily corrupting our government.

Who are these no-name corrupters? David Urban is one, considered the best-connected corporate huckster in the Trump swamp. He’s an old college pal of both Pentagon chief Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Moreover, he’s become such a close buddy of Donald himself that he’s known as a “Trump Whisperer,” able to work around the furies that rage in that strange orange head.

Such cozy ties to the top mean Urban gets his calls returned, an invaluable asset for his favor-seeking clientele, including Raytheon, Goldman Sachs, Bayer, Nike and Toyota. They, in turn, have made Urban rich, paying the once-obscure lobbyist more than $25 million since the Trumpeteers took office. And why wouldn’t they? For example, in 2019 the giant weapons maker Raytheon wanted to sell several billion dollars’ worth of missiles to Saudi Arabia’s royal rulers, but there was a congressional ban on such sales. No problem: (1) Raytheon enlisted Urban as their fixer; (2) he asked his pal Pompeo to meet with Raytheon’s CEO; and (3) voila! — the arms dealer promptly got a state department waiver to make the sale.

So, Washington lobbyists like Urban are now the top strategists and fundraisers for Trump 2020, hoping to get another four-year ride on the corrupt money-go-round.

During today’s COVID-19 crisis, the PR departments of every brand-name corporation are running slick ads nobly proclaiming: “We’re all in this together!”

Simultaneously, the corporate lobbying departments are ignobly using the public’s focus on the health crisis as cover for selfishly grabbing government favors for the corporation — everyone else be damned. And Trump’s totally corporate White House has been their corrupt cohort, serving as a front-end loader for everything from more corporate tax giveaways to jiggered labor rules that stiff workers.

One of the grabbiest special interests are well-off corporate and parochial private schools, where students from some of America’s wealthiest families get their education. For years, the nonpublic entities have been lobbying relentlessly to make taxpayers finance their schools, even though the schools are not open to all and usually have a narrow ideological or religious curriculum — including some extremist courses teaching that public schools should be eliminated.

That extremist nook is where Betsy DeVos resides. She’s a multibillionaire heiress and long-time funder of far-right causes. Chosen by Trump to run America’s education department, she’s been trying — by hook or crook — to run our schools straight into private hands… but with no success. Along came the COVID-19 federal relief package, including funds to help meet the education needs of low-income students in hard-hit public schools.

Hallelujah! shouted DeVos, grabbing the coronavirus as a way to advance her ideological agenda. In May, she issued an edict from on high requiring local public school districts to divert millions of the relief dollars from their disadvantaged students, forcing them to share their allotment with even the richest private schools. Astonishingly, Trump’s haughty education secretary rationalized her directive as a matter of economic fairness, piously informing locals that they must not “discriminate” against the rich.

DeVos’ “share-with-the-rich” dictum can be a bit imbalanced. Officials in New Orleans, for example, note that under her formula, 77% of its allotment would end up in private hands. Luckily, her “order” does not have the force of law, and public schools are fighting back. For information and action, go to the National Coalition for Public Education: NCPEcoalition.org.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/ousted-ig-says-he-was-working-on-5-investigations-into-state-department-when-he-was-fired/

update report

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fired-state-department-official-says-he-was-pressured-to-drop-probe-of-trumps-shady-saudi-arms-deal/

coi if not corrupt

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/mike-pompeo-crossed-a-line-by-forming-cia-advisory-board-solely-designed-to-advance-his-potential-funding-and-political-network/

mma 520

Trump admits Pompeo asked him to fire State Department inspector general, some major news outlets ignore the story

05/19/20 11:37 AM EDT

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/mike-pompeo-tried-to-defend-his-shady-ouster-of-a-watchdog-and-it-didnt-go-well/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/an-8-billion-saudi-arms-deal-a-revolving-door-lobbyist-and-a-fired-inspector-general-is-pompeo-in-trouble

charles Faulkner, a former Raytheon lobbyist and former principal deputy secretary of state who was forced to resign in 2019 due to conflicts of interest surrounding an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, was rehired by the administration four months later, Salon has learned.

Faulkner’s resignation kicked off two investigations, and appears to have landed him in the center of a probe of that arms deal by the recently-fired State Department inspector general.

The deal funneled $2 billion to defense contractor Raytheon, a firm Faulkner formerly represented as a lobbyist for BGR Group. Faulkner was reportedly forced to resign from his senior State Department position last May amid concerns about the key role he played in pushing the sale, which bypassed congressional objections through the rare step of declaring a national emergency.

In September 2019, however, the Trump administration quietly rehired Faulkner as chief of staff in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, four months following his resignation at State and right in the middle of the Ukraine scandal that led to President Trump’s impeachment.

While at BGR, Faulkner had lobbied on behalf of Raytheon since 2012. His LinkedIn page says he left BGR in May 2016, two months after the firm registered as an agent for the Saudi Arabian government. (Several months late.)

A year later, in June 2017, Faulkner signed on at the State Department’s office of legislative affairs as the department’s chief congressional liaison, where he worked until his resignation in May 2019.The Trump administration declared a national emergency to expedite the arms sales that same month.

Trump’s lobbying ban, signed shortly after his inauguration in January 2017, allowed lobbyists to enter the administration, but only a two-year ban from issues they had lobbied on. Some officials received waivers, but reportedly not Faulkner, whose timeline would appear to violate Trump’s order.

BGR did not register as a Raytheon client in 2019, the year the arms sale went through and the year Faulkner resigned at the State Department. It was the first time in a decade that BGR had not filed as a Raytheon representative.

Moreover, it was specifically Faulkner’s connection to the Saudi arms deal — which allowed Raytheon to cooperate with the Saudi government to build precision-guided bombs at plants in Saudi Arabia, reportedly giving the Saudis an inside look at sensitive U.S. military technology — that sparked an investigation last June by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I want to hear from the State Department official tomorrow: Who all was involved in this decision making?” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a committee member, said to the New York Times last June. “It would be problematic if a former lobbyist for a defense contractor was involved.”

Moreover, it was specifically Faulkner’s connection to the Saudi arms deal — which allowed Raytheon to cooperate with the Saudi government to build precision-guided bombs at plants in Saudi Arabia, reportedly giving the Saudis an inside look at sensitive U.S. military technology — that sparked an investigation last June by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn’t performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to, that was additive for the State Department, very consistent with what the statute says he’s supposed to be doing,” Pompeo said. “The kinds of activities he’s supposed to undertake to make us better, to improve us.”

According to initial reports, Linick had been looking into allegations that Pompeo had told a political appointee to run personal errands at taxpayer expense, including walking Pompeo’s dog, picking up dry cleaning and making dinner reservations for the secretary and his wife.

Reports about the inspector general’s work quickly expanded, however, to encompass an investigation into the Saudi arms sale, in which a minority group of State employees reportedly steamrolled diplomatic and congressional officials.

At the time of those internal negotiations, which began in 2018, the administration had been trying to push weapons deals through with both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates— understood as principal U.S. allies in the Gulf region — amid increasing tensions with Iran. But a recently-enacted law required Pompeo to suspend such military support unless he certified in a letter to Congress that he believed the Saudis were doing their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum in their brutal air war on Yemen.

During the contentious 2018 debates, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., placed a freeze on a $2 billion Raytheon proposal, which entailed the sale of 120,000 precision-guided missiles to the Saudi-led coalition involved in the Yemen war.

Faulkner and his legislative affairs team reportedly encouraged Pompeo to certify that Saudi Arabia had in fact addressed the casualty issue, reportedly out of concern over the pending arms sales, which included the stalled Raytheon deals, government officials told the Wall Street Journal.

While arguments on these issues were ongoing in the U.S., a contingent of Saudi agents, believed to be acting at the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, murdered and dismembered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.

In the aftermath of that apparent crime, BGR joined four other prominent lobbying firms in dropping its lucrative contract with the Saudi government, reportedly worth $80,000 a month.

In May 2019, Pompeo overruled a majority of State Department staff and sided with Faulkner, sidestepping Congress and issuing an emergency declaration that certified the Saudis were acting in accord with U.S. concerns. Faulkner resigned from the department shortly thereafter. As previously mentioned, BGR did not register as a Raytheon client in 2019, for the first time in 10 years.

On Monday, Pompeo told the Washington Post that Linick’s ouster was not related to any ongoing investigation, although his language appeared deliberately confusing. “It is not possible that this decision, or my recommendation rather, to the president rather, was based on any effort to retaliate for any investigation that was going on or is currently going on,” Pompeo said.

The State Department and the White House did not reply to Salon’s requests for comment.

Pompeo also denied any knowledge of the pending release of an investigation. “Because I simply don’t know. I’m not briefed on it. I usually see these investigations in final draft form 24 hours, 48 hours before the IG is prepared to release them,” he told the Washington Post on Monday. “So it’s simply not possible for this to be an act of retaliation. End of story.”

His denial appears to contradict reports by Politico andCNN that Pompeo had recently refused to sit for an interview with the inspector general’s office as part of its investigation into the Saudi weapons deal.

Pompeo said on Monday that he recalled only one case during his tenure at the department in which he knew of the existence of an investigation before a report on that investigation was released to the public. According to the Post, that investigation had been “involving a national security matter.”

Faulkner lobbied for the Ukrainian Investment Alliance at BGR, beginning in 2015. The Ukrainian group paid him $90,000 that year as their sole U.S. lobbyist.

The same year BGR Group hired Faulkner, it also added Kurt Volker, the former ambassador who collaborated with Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine scandal. That scandal also involved a block on a State Department weapons deal in the summer of 2019, a deal that directly benefited Raytheon.

Volker told Salon he did not know about investigations into Faulkner or the Saudi deal, beyond what he had read in recent press reports.

On the same day in July 2019 that the Saudi arms deal was passed by the Senate, a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a market in northern Yemen killed at least 10 civilians, some of them children.

Reached for comment, Faulkner told Salon that he was not aware of the investigations beyond recent news reports. Asked whether he had been contacted by the State Department, Linick or the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he said, “No comment,” then hung up.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/outrage-after-trump-quietly-fires-state-department-inspector-general-friday-night-slow-moving-coup/

no lnx

outrage after Trump quietly fires State Department inspector general Friday night: ‘Slow moving coup’

Written by Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams May 17, 2020

Democratic lawmakers and progressives erupted with anger after President Donald Trump on Friday night quietly removed the State Department’s Inspector general from his post, the latest example of the White House’s hostility to oversight and investigation.

“What checks and balances do we have left?” wondered journalist Andrew Kimmel. “The slow-moving coup continues to successfully—and quite easily—rid itself of any and all roadblocks.”

Brian Stelter

@brianstelter

If you went to bed early ??????? you missed another dismissal of another independent government watchdog. This time, it's State Department Inspector General Steve Linick...https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/politics/state-department-inspector-general-fired/index.html …

State Department inspector general becomes the latest watchdog fired by Trump

President Donald Trump on Friday fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the latestin a series of dismissals of independent government watchdogs that have come in the wake of the...

cnn.com

2,257

3:16 AM - May 16, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

1,782 people are talking about this

The president notified Steve Linick he would be removed from his post in 30 days—a timeline required by law to allow Congress time to look into the administration’s justification for the move—and would appoint Vice President Mike Pence ally Stephen Akard to the position.

Linick’s dismissal came shortly after reports surfaced that Linick was looking into possible misuse of political appointees for personal gain by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

As the Guardian reported:

According to a Democratic congressional aide, just before his abrupt dismissal Linick had opened an investigation into allegations that Pompeo had been using a political appointee at the state department to run personal errands for him and his wife, Susan.

House Intelligence Chair Rep. Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the move indicates trump believes he and his administration are “above the law.”

“I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo,” said Engel. “Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called for the Senate to investigate the dismissal.

“If Inspector General Linick was fired because he was conducting an investigation of conduct by Secretary Pompeo, the Senate cannot let this stand,” Murphy tweeted. “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee must get to bottom of what happened here.”

The firing marks the third inspector general Trump has removed from office in the past two months.

As Common Dreams reported, the president in April removed Intelligence Community inspector general Michael Atkinson from his post after Atkinson was revealed to have been behind delivering the whistleblower complaint on Ukraine to Congress that led to Trump’s impeachment in December 2019. In May, Trump fired Department of Health and Human Services inspector general Christi Grimm in part for a report on the administration’s lack of preparedness for the coronavirus outbreak.

In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to the firings of Linick and the other inspectors general as “dangerous.”

“The President must cease his pattern of reprisal and retaliation against the public servants who are working to keep Americans safe,” she said, “particularly during this time of global emergency.”

Trump’s flouting of convention and norms, said the New Yorker‘s John Cassidy, is revealing the flaws in the American government’s system of checks and balances.

“What’s the point of an inspector general if the folks being inspected can fire him/her at will?” tweeted Cassidy. “Another weakness in the system that Trump has exploited.”

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https://theintercept.com/2020/05/09/venezuela-coup-regime-change/

PICTURE THE FOLLOWING SCENE: Two former Venezuelan special forces soldiers are captured while trying to land on a beach in the United States. They confess on camera to being part of a wider plot to capture and kidnap the American president.

That same day, back in Venezuela, another ex-special forces soldier with connections to the longtime bodyguard of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, releases a video announcing the two men were working for his private security company, on a mission to detain and extract President Donald Trump and bring down the government in Washington, D.C.

Two days later, the Venezuelan foreign minister, who also happens to be the former head of the country’s feared intelligence agency, gives a press conference at which he chooses to deny only “direct” involvement in the operation. “If we had been involved, it would have gone differently,” he added, with a smirk.

What do you think the reaction would be here in the United States? Among political and media elites? In national security circles? Wouldn’t the U.S. press be running endless pieces denouncing and berating Maduro? Wouldn’t cable news be rolling on it? Does anyone doubt that the U.S. military would be preparing to attack targets across Venezuela in retaliation?

Yet that is exactly what we have witnessed over the past week — but in reverse, and without any sense of shock or outrage in the United States.

[In this photo released by Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication, Jorge Rodriguez shows a video of American Airan Berry, a former U.S. special forces soldier associated with the Florida-based private security firm Silvercorp USA, during a televised statement in Caracas, Venezuela, on May 7, 2020.]

On Monday, it was Venezuela that captured two former U.S. special forces soldiers, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, after what authorities described as their “botched beach landing in the fishing village of Chuao.” A video was released of Denman telling his interrogators that he had been tasked with capturing the Venezuelan president. Meanwhile, Florida-based ex-Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, head of the private security firm Silvercorp USA, appeared in a video alongside a former Venezuelan military officer in combat fatigues, in which he confirmed that Denman and Berry were working for him. (Press reports have since revealed that Goudreau had meetings with former longtime Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, had signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition, and also claims to have been in contact with the office of Vice President Mike Pence.)

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former director of the CIA, spoke at a press conference where he issued his very carefully worded denial: “There was no U.S. government direct involvement in this.” He also couldn’t help but brag to reporters about how it “would have gone differently” if the United States had been behind it. (Memo to Pompeo: Google “Bay of Pigs.”)

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3/17 pompeo ups sanctions on iran?! release americans, fund terror

Pompeo called out for threatening families

Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams

Amnesty International on Wednesday rebuked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over new comments bashing the International Criminal Court and threatening court staff—and their family members—investigating alleged war crimes committed by…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/mike-pompeo-called-out-for-threatening-families/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/evil-and-heartless-trump-administration-hits-iran-with-brutal-sanctions-amid-its-devastating-covid-19-outbreak/

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pow

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/05/iran-coronavirus-medicine-sanctions/

DESPITE A MASSIVE coronavirus-related public health crisis, an anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.

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With a novel strain of coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’sspecial financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the beleaguered country.

“U.S. sanctions have had a long-term impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies,” said Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in sanctions law at Ferrari & Associates. He pointed to “outside groups” that seek to bolster the Treasury Department’s investigatory heft and provide information on companies doing trade with Iran. “In tandem with U.S. sanctions,” Cullis said, “these groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”

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“These groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”

}:

The medical and humanitarian trade are carved out of crippling sanctions against Iran through special licenses issued by the Treasury Department. But companies must apply for the licenses then carry out the trade — something United Against Nuclear Iran, known as UANI, seeks to discourage.

“Their efforts are not insignificant,” Cullis said. “It is, after all, not an altogether lucrative enterprise selling medical supplies to Iran, so the name-and-shame operations of outside groups have a significant impact on the cost-benefit analysis associated with doing business with Iran.”

Joshua Silberberg, a spokesperson for UANI, declined to respond to questions about the group’s effort to name and shame companies doing medical trade with Iran. “UANI has a long history of expressing support and solidarity with the Iranian people,” he said, pointing to a statement applauding the finalization of the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, an agreement arranged by the U.S. and Swiss governments.

UANI says it aims to persuade “the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people.” (The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Iran has any desire or plans to build nuclear weapons.) UANI’s efforts, however, have extended beyond sanctions into pressuring companies that do legal trade with Iran, often under the Treasury Department’s humanitarian exemptions to sanctions — including medical-related trades that would presumably aid in combating a massive public health crisis like this coronavirus outbreak.

UANI operates an “Iran Business Registry” that provides an online database of companies it believes are conducting business in or with Iran — a name-and-shame strategy to increase Iran’s economic isolation. The pressure campaign has targeted multiple medical companies with Treasury Department licenses to conduct trade with Iran. Nine pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations, all with special licenses, are listed on UANI’s business registry. Companies urged by UANI to “end their Iran business” include Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme, AirSep, Medrad, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories.

The legal channels for humanitarian trade are widely reported to be failing to provide a sufficient flow of medicine and other humanitarian goods.

UANI’S EFFORTS ARE particularly notable in light of the group’s close ties to the Trump administration; Iran’s regional adversaries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel; and the Republican Party’s biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.

Senior UANI adviser John Bolton worked for UANI both before and after his stint in the Trump administration as national security adviser. UANI’s umbrella group, Counter Extremism Project United Inc, paid Bolton $240,000 between 2016 and 2017.Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser was quickly followed by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran.

Besides Bolton, the Trump administration twice sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to UANI’s annual conference, held during the United Nations General Assembly. Pompeo used the occasions topromote outlandish claimsabout Europe purportedly financing Iranian terrorism and to present the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy to UANI’s audience,which included senior diplomats and intelligence officials from the Persian Gulf and Israel.

The group’s last summit, held in September, featuredU.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is now Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, as well as a who’s who of the Trump administration’s hawkish Middle East partners, including top diplomats from Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel. (UANI and its affiliated organizations have a number of links to Gulf monarchies, including a 2014 email from a UANI advisory board member soliciting “support” from the United Arab Emirates.)

UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan — an investor whose companies have looked to profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East — was also in attendance at the summit.

Finally, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran.In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders in the 2018 cycle. They are expected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.

While the Trump administration’s extreme financial pressure against Iran is coinciding with the coronavirus outbreak, Tyler Cullis, the sanctions lawyer, was careful to note that issues with ensuring a robust trade of medical and humanitarian supplies to Iran began under previous administrations. “While those problems have been exacerbated under the Trump administration,” Cullis said, “their origination takes place more than a decade ago when prior administrations first started imposing enormous sanctions pressure on Iran’s financial sector.”

an 220

I don’t think that you are telling us the truth’: House Democrats grill Pompeo on Iran and coronavirus

Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee Friday assailed Secretary…

It is shameful!’: Democrat Ted Lieu corners Mike Pompeo before he runs off to CPAC and avoids more questions

Alex Henderson

Some Democrats have been highly critical of the response by President Donald Trump’s administration to the threat of coronavirus, which according to CNN, has killed more than 2800 people worldwide.…

npr

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/hollowed-out-from-within-trump-insidious-corruption-extends-far-beyond-bill-barrs-justice-department/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/shameful-assault-on-press-freedom-mike-pompeo-denounced-for-insulting-and-contemptuous-statement-lashing-out-at-npr-reporter/

Shameful assault on press freedom’: Mike Pompeo denounced for ‘insulting and contemptuous’ statement lashing out at NPR reporter

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at NPR reporter…

no lnx

‘Shameful assault on press freedom’: Mike Pompeo denounced for ‘insulting and contemptuous’ statement lashing out at NPR reporter

Written by Common Dreams January 26, 2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly in a statement Saturday a day after she pressed Pompeo on issues including former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and he reportedly yelled at her with expletives and demanded she identify Ukraine on a map.

In her Friday interview with Pompeo, Kelly asked about the administration’s Iran policy and pressed Pompeo about when—since he said he has “defended every State Department official”—he had done so for Yovanovitch.

He did not point to any such remarks.

Amazing clip. Pompeo: zip.

Brava, @NPRKelly and Morning Edition. I don’t get to say that very often these days, but it is justified here. pic.twitter.com/3iEHEPjCef

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 24, 2020

NPR reported,

Immediately after the questions on Ukraine, the interview concluded. Pompeo stood, leaned in, and silently glared at Kelly for several seconds before leaving the room.

A few moments later, an aide asked Kelly to follow her into Pompeo’s private living room at the State Department without a recorder. The aide did not say the ensuing exchange would be off the record.

Pompeo then went on to attempt to berate Kelly.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly says the following happened after the interview in which she asked some tough questions to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. pic.twitter.com/cRTb71fZvX

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 24, 2020

Pompeo, in his statement, accused Kelly of lying about having the follow-up conversation off the record, asserted her conduct was “shameful,” and called the indent “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration.”

He also suggested, contrary to Kelly’s account, that she did not point to Ukraine on a map. “It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine,” he wrote.

Pompeo claims @NPRKelly mistakenly identified Bangladesh as Ukraine. As we evaluate what may be the most breathtakingly childish official statement ever issued by a Secretary of State in over two centuries, consider the magnitude of the mistake he implausibly claims she made: https://t.co/ShLL4eDWzn pic.twitter.com/K5WlJkIwzl

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) January 25, 2020

Pompeo’s remarks drew condemnation from journalists including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who called them “a shameful assault on #PressFreedom. Americans deserve a Secretary of State that is diplomatic, can answer foreign policy questions honestly, upholds our values and respects the press. This one doesn’t.”

Wired also pointed to its reporting from October that “Pompeo seems to particularly bristle under tough questioning from female reporters.”

Pompeo’s Saturday attack on Kelly also sparked five Democratic senators—Robert Menendez (N.J.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), and Cory Booker (N.J.)—to write to Pompeo, denouncing the secretary of state’s comments as “insulting and contemptuous.”

“Instead of calling journalists ‘liars” and insulting their intelligence when they ask you hard questions you would rather not answer,” the senators wrote, “your oath of office places on you a duty and obligation to engage respectfully and transparently.”

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Trump hits NPR with veiled threat after Pompeo blow-up with reporter over Ukraine

President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against National Public…

ump issued a veiled threat against National Public Radio on Sunday morning, just days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on an expletive-filled rant at an NPR reporter that she revealed to the public afterward.

On Sunday, the president retweeted Fox News host Mark Levin who argued, “Why does NPR still exist? We have thousands of radio stations in the U.S. Plus Satellite radio. Podcasts. Why are we paying for this big-government, Democrat Party propaganda operation.”

To which the president added, “A very good question!”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/mike-pompeo-gets-cornered-and-flails-when-a-radio-host-calls-out-his-lies-about-the-ukraine-scandal/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/

no lnx

Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying

End Times.

Stephanie Mencimer January 23, 2020

Mother Jones

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But don’t mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: It’s based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a “place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel “like a cloud that covers the land.” LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other group—more than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if he’s going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administration’s inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered the killing of Soleimani. “Iran has this big part to play in biblical history,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. “There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israel’s history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.”

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trump’s foreign policy. “When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration,” she says. “They don’t necessarily want violence, but they’re eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”

Not all or even most evangelicals believe in the literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trump’s religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. “The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible,” Stewart promised, “is now falling into place.”

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldn’t have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” The secretary of state’s End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. … until the Rapture.”

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeo’s religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But it’s not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trump’s disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. That’s because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who don’t accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trump’s talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. “They hate the UN,” Sutton says. “Trump’s unilateralism is also music to their ears.”

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reaganwas advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, andpersonally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

George W. Bush: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are.Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the “not respectable charlatan wing” of evangelical Christianity. They’re the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. “I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies,” Bass says, “which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that he’s part of God’s prophetic fulfillment for these last days.”

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as “a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics.” They’re the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospel—the notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace “dominionist” theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations “are telling people over and over again that Trump was ‘chosen,’ that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in God’s End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.”

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

He has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction.“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives,” he announced. “Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives.” He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, “The sum of Iran’s evil is greater than the whole of its parts.”

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), then–national security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, “This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was.” Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

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Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trump’s evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but he’s far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos President.An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trump’s election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles.(For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trump’s reelection.) Dr. Lance, as he’s known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trump’s spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoing—church leaders refused to cooperate with the investigation—but in 2012, White’s church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a “charlatan” and “heretic.” Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies “demonic.”

Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. It’s a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trump’s narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. “I think that Trump likes it when people think he’s close to God—he called himself the ‘chosen one’—and to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing,” Bass says. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.”

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Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaign’s Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called “The Supernatural Now.” He’s the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in God’s plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, “America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.”

André Gagné, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. “If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world,” Gagné says. “They’re ready. They can’t wait for the Rapture to happen. For them it’s the ultimate reunion with God.”

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UKRAINE

fired marie ambass, bill tayor, cancelled trip to ukraine after house impeach testimony? the n december visit?

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/mike-pompeo-ukraine-impeachment-volodymyr-zelensky

— US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Ukraine next week, just as the Senate's impeachment trial of Donald Trump on charges he sought to pressure Ukraine's government into investigating Joe Biden heats up.

Three diplomatic sources with knowledge of Pompeo’s schedule told BuzzFeed News he will visit Kyiv next Friday, Jan. 31.

His visit will include a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose phone call with Trump is at the heart of the impeachment trial. Pompeo's trip will mark the first time a member of Trump's cabinet has met Zelensky since the impeachment saga began last September, when news broke that Trump had withheld military aid and a White House visit in order to pressure Zelensky to publicly announce investigations into former vice president Biden, and his son, Hunter.

Ukraine’s leaders will be pleased with the visit, which is meant to show that the US still stands by the country’s side as it continues to fight a war against an aggressive Russia in its east and against corrupt oligarchs in its capital.

The three diplomatic sources described Pompeo’s upcoming visit as substantive and not simply a drop-in. Pompeo, the sources said, is expected to also meet with top government officials, and to pay his respects to Ukraine’s fallen soldiers and revolutionaries at memorials in the capital.

However, some observers say the visit shows where Ukraine stands among the Trump administration’s priorities. “The timing of Pompeo’s visit is in keeping with the White House’s past behavior towards Kyiv, which has made it clear that it’s far down its list of priorities,” said Katharine Quinn-Judge, a Ukraine analyst for Crisis Group.

Ivan Yakovina, a foreign policy columnist for Ukraine's Novoye Vremya newsmagazine, said one reason for Pompeo’s trip could be to make sure that “no bad surprises would come from Kyiv during the Trump Senate trial.”

“I mean no word-to-word transcripts of the relevant phone calls or other documents will leak,” he said. “If I were him I would assure the Ukrainians that they will be rewarded if nothing unexpected happens during the trial. And punished if comrade Trump’s enemies will get some sort of help or comfort from Kyiv.”

The trip could also shine a critical light on Pompeo’s decision to recall former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and the slow response to the possible surveillance of her by allies of President Trump. It could also expose tensions between Pompeo and career US foreign service officers stationed in Kyiv, who’ve expressed their frustration with the secretary of state privately to BuzzFeed News in recent weeks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his US counterpart Donald Trump at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last September.

Several current and former embassy officials said they didn’t want Pompeo to visit the embassy when he had scheduled his previously planned visit, which was canceled because of heightened US–Iran tensions. Media reports at the time quoted State Department officials as saying that Pompeo wanted to avoid the embassy altogether and would hold meetings in his hotel.

Some of those embassy officials described to BuzzFeed News a feeling of being demoralized, and said they have been ordered to keep a low profile amid the impeachment saga. The embassy is currently led on an acting basis by charge d’affaires Kristina Kvien, who took the lead after Bill Taylor vacated his temporary position on Jan. 2 — the day before Pompeo was first scheduled to visit Kyiv.

Pompeo is expected to stay one night in Kyiv before departing to Minsk, Belarus, the three diplomatic sources said. Russia’s TASS news agency, citing the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, also reported Wednesday that Pompeo plans to visit Minsk on Feb. 1, as did Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Belarusian service. The timing of the Minsk visit is interesting, since it comes as Trump is reportedly considering whether to impose travel restrictions on Belarusians.

The US Embassy in Kyiv declined to comment on travel plans that haven’t been officially announced. The State Department didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry wouldn’t confirm Pompeo’s visit, saying “the prerogative of officially announcing visits to Ukraine by foreign ministers of other states usually belongs to their corresponding governments.” The ministry pointed BuzzFeed News to a readout of a Jan. 10 call between Zelensky and Pompeo that says their offices were planning for the two to meet in Kyiv at the end of January.

Pompeo’s visit comes after Ukrainian authorities opened an investigation into the possible illegal surveillance of Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Pompeo in April. Text messages released last week from Lev Parnas, a Rudy Giuliani associate who played a key role in his Trump-approved Ukraine back-channel campaign, showed a conversation between Parnas and another man discussing Yovanovitch’s movements in Kyiv.

Marie Yovanovitch testifying before the House Intelligence Committee last November.]

That other man, Robert Hyde, a relatively obscure landscaper and Connecticut congressional candidate who has been photographed with Trump, wrote to Parnas in March about having contacts in Ukraine who were watching Yovanovitch. Hyde, who called Yovanovitch a “bitch” in the texts, went on to say, “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.” And he added: “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money...what I was told.”

It’s unclear whether the men were actually coordinating surveillance of Yovanovitch in Kyiv, but Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, whose own relationship with the former ambassador had been tense due to her criticism of his work, ordered investigators to look into it.

Pompeo broke his silence on the matter last Friday, telling an Indianapolis radio host, “We will do everything we need to do to evaluate whether there was something that took place there,” according to the Associated Press. “I suspect that much of what’s been reported will ultimately prove wrong, but our obligation, my obligation as secretary of state, is to make sure that we evaluate, investigate,” Pompeo was quoted as saying. “Anytime there is someone who posits that there may have been a risk to one of our officers, we’ll obviously do that.”

Yovanovitch was recalled and ordered to leave Kyiv suddenly, leaving her elderly mother behind, last April. According to witnesses, including Yovanovitch herself, who testified publicly in the House impeachment investigation, Pompeo had indicated to other State Department officials that Yovanovitch had lost the confidence of Trump after the president was told by Giuliani and others that she had been badmouthing him. There’s no evidence to indicate that Yovanovitch had done so, and colleagues who’ve known her for years have said the career diplomat who served under Democrat and Republican presidents would never do that.

According to impeachment testimony by several former and current Trump administration officials, Pompeo was fully aware of the effort led by Giuliani, a lawyer working for Trump, to remove Yovanovitch and pressure Zelensky to open investigations that helped Trump politically in exchange for military aid and a White House visit.

Pompeo has so far declined to speak about his personal role in the effort led by Giuliani.

MORE ON THIS

Ukraine Is Investigating Whether Marie Yovanovitch Was Under Surveillance By Rudy Giuliani's AssociatesChristopher Miller · Jan. 16, 2020
Rudy Giuliani Flew Into Ukraine On A Budget Flight. He Left On A Private Jet.Christopher Miller · Dec. 18, 2019

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Democrats are outraged as Mike Pompeo’s admission collapsed his defense of Trump’s attack on Iran

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Secretary of Mike Pompeo said Thursday there is “no doubt” that assassinated Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on Americans but—in the very same sentence—admitted the U.S. doesn’t…

see bak, bio

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/mike-pompeo-translates-trump.html

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-assassinated-soleimani-to-gain-favor-with-key-gop-senators-vital-to-supporting-him-during-impeachment-trial-wsj/

no lnx

Trump assassinated Soleimani to gain favor with key GOP senators vital to supporting him during impeachment trial: WSJ

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement January 10, 2020

It has long been said that President Trump only acts in his own self-interest, not the nation’s. And while in recent days President Trump has described the Iranian general he assassinated, Qasem Soleimani, as a “sadistic mass murderer,” and lambasted his predecessors for not having killed him earlier, the truth is few Americans had ever heard of Soleimani before his death, and not once had Trump, at least publicly, ever mentioned his name.

So why was he assassinated, and why now?

The administration and President Trump on and off have claimed there was an “imminent threat” of an attack against the U.S. personnel or U.S. Armed Forces. Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday insisted any evidence to support that claim is far too sensitive to share, even with top members of Congress, sworn to secrecy, in a classified briefing.

Numerous reports put Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an end-times Christian extremist who believes the Middle East is a hotbed of Biblical proportions, as the driving force behind the killing of Soleimani.

“We will continue to fight these battles,” Pompeo said in 2015, insisting there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”

But like all things Trump, it boils down to self-protection and self-interest.

The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive Thursday night, headlined, “Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike.”

And buried in the center of the article, dozens of paragraphs in, is the devastating revelation that President Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general to gain favor with key Republicans whose support is vital to winning his impeachment trial:

Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.

Some have just started to weigh in on the grotesque news.

Michelangelo Signorile

@MSignorile

Let’s be clear re: this WSJ story:

Trump assassinated Soleimani based on no imminent threat to please GOP Senators who were pressuring him & who he needed re: impeachment.

Terribly corrupt and, well, impeachable. https://twitter.com/JoeSudbay/status/1215636962079657984 …

Joe Sudbay

@JoeSudbay

So, yeah, it was about impeachment --> "Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said" https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 … via @WSJ

Dennis Mersereau

@wxdam

It takes until the 29th paragraph in this story to mention that Trump told people his looming impeachment trial was a factor in his greenlighting the strike against Soleimani.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …

Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike

White House advisers were cohesive and less inclined than their predecessors to push back against the president’s wishes. They also were less likely to consult in advance with others, including...

wsj.com

ets

Eric Columbus

@EricColumbus

And there it is. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-national-security-team-made-fast-work-of-iran-strike-11578619195 …

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PPP

ref

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/07/pompeo-aligns-u-s-foreign-policy-with-the-christian-zionists/

According to the Washington Post, it was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who talked Trump into the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, with an assist from Vice President Mike Pence. They report that Pompeo first proposed the idea months ago, which is at odds with the administration’s claim that the strike was based on intelligence about an “imminent threat.”

While the authors of that piece chronicle the fact that the secretary of state has been obsessed with Iran throughout his career in Congress, the CIA, and now at the State Department, they failed to address the question of what motivates his interest.

As Kathryn Joyce pointed out last March, “even amid an administration stacked with evangelical staffers and advisors, Pompeo stands out.” At about that time, the secretary of state was in Jerusalem and sat down for an interview with reporters from the Christian Broadcast Network.

Chris Mitchell asked Pompeo, “could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?”…

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Pompeo said.

On that occasion, Pompeo was reacting to a question from a reporter. But a few months later, he gave a speech titled “The U.S. and Israel: a Friendship for Freedom.” He used the occasion to bring up the Biblical story of Esther himself.

A lot of people get spun up with the wrong ideas that American evangelicals want to impose a theocracy on America. I wish they would be concerned about the real theocratic takeover that has been happening in Iran for the last four decades. The ayatollahs have grievously deprived the Iranian people of that most basic, simple, fundamental right, their right to worship.

That same twisted, intolerant doctrine that fuels persecution inside Iran has also led the ayatollah and his cronies to cry out, quote, “death to Israel” for four decades now. This is similar to a cry that came out of Iran—then called Persia—many, many years ago.

It was in the 5th century B.C. There was a wicked advisor named King Xerxes. A fellow named Haman hatched a plot to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire. He secretly wrote letters with the king’s seal to all the provincial governors, ordering the people to rise up and attack the Jews. This edict, once issued, could not be revoked. But thanks to the courageous intervention of Queen Esther, who begged the king to show mercy to her people, Haman’s plot was exposed and the Jews were ultimately spared.

I wanted to tell this story today for a couple of reasons, because similar threats to the Jewish people have marked other eras as well… Thank God we have a leader in President Trump—an immovable friend of Israel.

Pompeo went on to articulate the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on Iran as a demonstration of its support for Israel.

The secretary gave that speech to a group known as Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that was the brainchild of John Hagee. Here is what Sarah Posner wrote about him back in 2006:

Hagee, who serves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… With CUFI, which Hagee has said will cause a “political earthquake,” the televangelist aims to put the political organizing muscle of the conservative evangelical movement behind his grand plan for a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

Vice President Mike Pence addressed the same group in 2017.

One of the things Hagee is known for is the elaborate charts he has created to predict the rapture and events leading up to the end times. He also has a history of making bigoted statements about Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. John McCain was forced to distance himself from the pastor after he received an endorsement for his presidential campaign in 2008. Clearly, neither Pompeo nor Pence share those concerns about Hagee and his organization.

What we are witnessing is a secretary of state who is conducting U.S. foreign policy in alignment with Christian Zionism, with the support of the vice president. While neoconservatives like John Bolton have their own twisted logic for wanting regime change in Iran, it is the belief that events in the Middle East align with Biblical prophecy about the end times that motivates Christian Zionists like Pompeo, Pence, and Hagee.

As I noted when the same crowd celebrated Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, rising tensions in the Middle East are a feature, not a bug, for these folks. That’s because all of this was prophesied thousands of years ago as a prelude to the rapture. In other words, they welcome the escalation.

ref 1

The Christianization of U.S. Foreign Policy

Behind President Trump's Twitter theatrics, there's a growing theme to American diplomacy.

By KATHRYN JOYCE

March 25, 2019

#####

https://newrepublic.com/article/153387/christianization-us-foreign-policy

Last Thursday, Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, a radical shift in foreign policy, saying it was time to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied territory of Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1981. As international headlines quickly pointed out, the tweet contradicted both international law and a UN resolution; seemed a transparent gift to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just weeks before he faces re-election amid a corruption scandal; and cheered Israeli conservatives hoping to have Israeli control of the West Bank recognized as well. Upon hearing the news, NBC reported, Netanyahu hugged U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Israel as part of a five-day tour of the Middle East. Less discussed was the way in which the tweet capped off a week showcasing the Trump administration’s favored relationship with American evangelicals.

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The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), among Pompeo’s traveling press team, sat down with the secretary in Jerusalem, and breathlessly reported something quite different from the mainstream press’s legalistic coverage: that Trump might just be “a modern-day Esther, poised to defend Israel and save the Jewish people.”

To convince U.S. evangelicals to overlook Trump’s personal failings, the president has previously been compared to Persian King Cyrus, a nonbeliever in the Bible who nonetheless became an instrument for fulfilling God’s will, conquering Babylon and allowing Jews to return to Israel. The comparison has also resonated elsewhere: Last March, an Israeli organization minted a coin pairing images of Cyrus and Trump, while Netanyahu underscored the comparison in a Washington, D.C., speech thanking Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Pompeo’s statement elevated the stakes, referring to the biblical story of Queen Esther, who used her beauty and wiles to prevent a massacre of Persian Jews—a feat commemorated in the annual Jewish holiday of Purim, also celebrated last Thursday. Netanyahu, too, declared Trump’s tweet “a miracle of Purim.”

Republicans have ventured the comparison before, with both Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. The story of Esther, journalist Sarah Posner has observed, has long been used by Christian Zionists—evangelicals who believe the return of Christ depends on an apocalyptic scenario in which Jews return to Israel, and convert to Christianity—to argue for an invasion of Iran.

For Trump, it’s a particularly audacious comparison. “Esther’s story is that of a young Jewish woman in the ‘harem’ of the Persian king, and through her wit, grace, and charm ends up as queen—and able to avert the bloodlust of an antisemitic minister,” Steven Gardiner, an anthropologist and senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, wrote to me via email. “In other words, Esther was a woman placed in the terrifying and untenable position of sexual servitude, but nonetheless managed to save her people. No one less resembles that position than Donald Trump.

Much ink has already been spilled over the bargain Christian leaders in the United States made regarding Trump, backing a candidate with a highly questionable personal life in exchange for Supreme Court seats. Less noticed is how the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to foreign policy under the deeply religious supervision of Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, continually pitches itself to the Christian Right.

Last Monday, just before his departure to the Middle East, Secretary Pompeo held a press call about international religious freedom. Domestically, the Trump administration has chiefly interpreted religious freedom as a matter of exemptions to laws protecting LGBTQ people and women’s healthcare, or efforts to lift restrictions on churches’ political campaigning. Internationally, religious freedom has meant a laser-like focus on Christian persecution, with scant attention to the plight of any other religious minorities: The October release of North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, detained for two years in Turkey on terrorism charges, was one high-profile victory.

Monday’s call excluded the entire State Department press corps, restricting participation to a small group of “faith-based” media outlets. When an invitation was accidentally sent to a member of the mainstream press and then rescinded, bringing the exclusive briefing to light, the department doubled down, refusing to provide a transcript of the call or a list of its participants, and arguing that, as a roundtable discussion targeted at “audience-specific media,” it wasn’t subject to normal transparency practices.

Journalists as well as former State Department spokesperson John Kirby were appalled. “These officials are public servants,” Kirby told CNN. “What they say—in its entirety—is inherently of public interest.” Particularly, he added, on a topic as “universally relevant as religious freedom in the Middle East.”

One of the media organizations on the call, Religion News Service (not itself a faith-based publication, but a secular outlet that covers the religion beat), reported a partial list of other participants, including the Jewish wire service Jewish Telegraphic Agency; the center-right Jewish magazine Algemeiner; the evangelical World Magazine; and two Catholic publications, Americamagazine and the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City.

Notably missing from this line-up were any Muslim media organizations, remarkable given the call’s reported inclusion of the administration’s soon-to-be-released Israel-Palestine peace plan.

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Monday’s call wasn’t the first time that Pompeo’s department has privileged faith-based media over mainstream reporters. Last July, just ahead of the department’s first-ever “ministerial for international religious freedom,” as New York Times religion reporter Elizabeth Dias noted on Twitter, Pompeo had sit-down interviews with four evangelical news outlets, including the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), before a press conference call where evangelical publications World Magazine and Christianity Today were picked first for questions, and mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, were only invited to pose questions at the end of the call. And evangelical figures have also had enhanced access to policy decisions. In early March, the administration hosted a meeting with evangelical leaders—including prominent (and deeply controversial) Christian Zionist leaders like Pastor John Hagee—to “hear any concerns and red lines” they might have on a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, according to an Axios source, and to reassure them that any plan would protect Israeli interests.

CBN’s sit-down with Mike Pompeo was only the latest episode in the network’s close relationship with the Trump administration—one that, as Al Jazeera argued last fall, is just as mutually beneficial as the better-known link to Fox & Friends, but is often overlooked as a part of the administration’s effective state media because of the niche audience it targets. CBN’s audience, and its interests, both help explain the administration’s policy moves and may exert influence on them, appealing to a president known for being easily swayed by flattery.

CBN’s stated mission is to ready the U.S. “for the coming of Jesus Christ.” To that end, it focuses heavily on Middle East issues. It airs the weekly program Jerusalem Dateline, and regularly features guests like Joel Rosenberg, the author of a series of Middle East-set evangelical apocalyptic or political thriller novels and a member of Pompeo’s inner circle, who has helped broker interviews between the Secretary and the network. Earlier this month, Rosenberg appeared on CBN to discuss his latest work of fiction, The Persian Gamble, which posits that Iran used U.S. money to buy North Korean nukes. Rosenberg said he’d recently explained the book’s plot to President Trump. “How do you know that’s not happening already?” Trump apparently replied.

The steady undercurrent to CBN’s focus is the Christian Zionist conviction that the return of Christ depends on a specific scenario involving the return of Jews to Israel. It’s a belief that Pompeo seems to share, having told a Kansas church audience in 2015 to keep fighting “until the rapture.”

Even amid an administration stacked with evangelical staffers and advisors, Pompeo stands out. As former CIA director he described the “war on terror” as a holy war and said the U.S. “worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.” He now readily tells audiences about how he keeps a Bible open on his State Department desk to remind him of God’s truth. One of the driving motivators of Pompeo’s State Department increasingly seems to be what Gardiner calls “well-documented beliefs in the prophetic necessity of the establishment of a ‘Greater Israel’ in order to usher in the End Times”—hardly a stabilizing central principle in an era of nuclear risk. Meanwhile, holding “separate interviews with religious broadcasters,” Gardiner pointed out, means “reaching the white evangelicals who are the single most unwavering part of the voting base of an embattled president.”

It’s easy to get distracted by the secular spectacle of Trump’s manic Twitter feed, filled with arbitrary bits of outrage or lavish praise, depending on whichever leader has flattered him lately. But as last week showed, better than others, there’s a more disciplined administrative force at work behind the scenes, crafting an intensely ideological foreign policy.

Kathryn Joyce is a contributing editor at The New Republic and author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption

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ref 2?

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https://newrepublic.com/article/156134/mike-pompeo-dangerous-man-world-right-now

mike Pompeo Is the Most Dangerous Man in the World Right Now

The Soleimani assassination and its aftermath suggest that America's top diplomat is really the viceroy of its national security establishment.

By ADAM WEINSTEIN

January 6, 2020

When the United States bombed its own former air base in Baghdad to kill Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s revered Middle East paramilitary commander, just before Friday prayers last week, the pretext was that he was about to kill a bunch of Americans. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quick to praise the “decision to eliminate Soleimani in response to imminent threats to American lives.” What threat? It wasn’t clear, and officials in government, as well as politicians on Capitol Hill briefed after the attack, were quick to say the “imminent threat” argument sounded thin based on what they’d seen.

We now know it wasn’t thin; it was a damned lie. The Washington Post revealed yesterday that President Trump had long been lobbied to kill Soleimani, by none other than Pompeo himself. “Pompeo,” the paper’s national security team reported, “first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation.”

That changed after a U.S. contractor was killed on December 27 in an attack on a base in northern Iraq, allegedly by a Soleimani-connected Iraqi Shiite militia. It was then that Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper—Pompeo’s West Point classmate, and a former defense contractor who largely owes his position to the secretary of state—traveled to Mar-a-Lago and lobbied Trump hard to bomb Soleimani, a provocative, destabilizing move that officials told thePost “would not have happened under [Jim] Mattis,” the former secretary of defense. (Esper, according to new reporting by *Foreign Policy,* also cut key Pentagon officials out of the strike decision, likely because it would have faced resistance from them.)

Pompeo’s lies didn’t stop there. He also denied that Trump threatened to commit war crimes against Iranian cultural sites, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He continues to make the rounds on television, arguing that the Soleimani assassination has made Americans safer, even as his own underlings at Foggy Bottom warn U.S. citizens to “depart Iraq immediately,” without the State Department’s help, since, “Due to Iranian-backed militia attacks at the U.S. Embassy compound, all public consular operations are suspended until further notice.”

But it’s not just that Pompeo has proven unfathomably mendacious: It’s that he’s acting more like a viceroy in charge of the American security establishment than a top diplomat. For more than a year now, he has systematically led Trump and the Pentagon onto a war footing with Iran with shocking, unprecedented moves. These include designating a foreign government arm as a terrorist group; taking trips without his Pentagon counterpart to consult with America’s Mideast combatant commanders; defying Congress to arm the Saudis and other Iranian antagonists in the region; and publicly blaming regional attacks on Tehran with little evidence but heavily edited, ambiguous videos. If there’s mounting evidence for anything, it’s that Pompeo may currently be the most dangerous man in the world not named Trump.

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Last April, Trump announced that the U.S. would designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian government entity (the one, in fact, that technically employed Soleimani), as a foreign terrorist organization. This made the U.S. the third nation out of 195 on earth—along with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—to treat the 125,000-member IRGC, an official branch of the Iranian military, as a terror group.

Despite significant evidence that IRGC operations had cost American soldiers’ lives in Iraq, both directly and indirectly, the U.S. military establishment had not wanted to take this step. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, opposed the move, as did other officials, who described it to *The* *New York Times* as the product of a “chaotic and rushed process” and warned that “it could incite retaliation by Tehran against American troops and intelligence officers.” This momentous national security decision, however, wasn’t the military establishment’s to make: Ultimate responsibility lay with the U.S. Department of State and Pompeo.

Even within the diplomatic corps, there was considerable consternation about designating a government entity as a terror group, the first time that had ever been attempted. Officials at State “had asked Mr. Pompeo to delay any announcement, arguing that the designation could have unintended consequences for unrelated countries,” according to the Times. Pompeo, however, “dismissed their concerns” and delivered a key political talking point to Trump. The following month, Pompeo and the State Department used an “emergency” loophole to circumvent Congress and sell $8 billion in military hardware to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, ostensible allies of the U.S. against Iran, despite the fact that there was no war between the parties.

A month after that, when a Japanese oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman was attacked with an apparent limpet mine in June, it was Pompeo who spoke for the U.S. administration before any official, blaming Iran for the blast. “It’s unmistakable what happened here,” Pompeo said on a friendly forum, Fox News. “These were attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran on commercial shipping, on the freedom of navigation, with the clear intent to deny transit through the Strait.”

What evidence did Pompeo have? “The world will come to see much of it,” he promised, “but the American people should rest assured we have high confidence with respect to who conducted these attacks, as well as half a dozen other attacks throughout the world over the past 40 days.”

The U.S. eventually offered a military video of an Iranian small boat beside the tanker, in broad daylight, inspecting the blast site and allegedly recovering material from it. The footage, expert analysts pointed out, “has significant gaps, cuts out at key moments, and zooms in and out. It does not depict a single sequence of events, or an explosive being planted.” DOCTORED VIDEO

It’s the nature of the Trump era that events from months ago can be hard to recall, but Pompeo’s saber-rattling over the Gulf of Oman incident almost led to a real shooting war. As those war clouds gathered, he took advantage of relative disarray in Pentagon leadership to fly down to the Florida headquarters of U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command in order to “discuss regional security concerns and ongoing operations” with uniformed leaders. Mattis’s interim replacement as defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, did not accompany Pompeo on that trip; he was never confirmed by Congress and would be out of the job shortly afterward. Nor was it ever explained why Pompeo needed face time with American generals; a State Department spokesman only told me that Pompeo was “there to listen.” He didn’t explain why that couldn’t be done on a phone call.

Just a few days after that Pompeo trip, a U.S. drone was shot down by Iranian forces, who claimed that it had breached their air space.Goaded by Pompeo, Trump reportedly ordered a bombing campaign against Iran—then tweeted that he’d called it off, 10 minutes before it was supposed to begin. Losing that round of Iranian roulette, a U.S. official told the*Post* yesterday, had left Pompeo “morose.”

What, exactly, is behind Pompeo’s obsession with Iran? It could be his own evangelical convictions that the Islamic Republic must be confronted. It could be domestic politics; it’s long been rumored that he’ll step down to run for Senate in Kansas, and the Post points out that his “maximalist position on Iran … has made him popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals.” Whatever the explanation, his moves are the very opposite of statesmanship, ignorant of the consequences of open conflict with a developed nation of 82 million people.

Trump, of course, has to sign off on all this saber-rattling, and he does, because he loves to wield weapons and fancy himself a tough leader. But Trump himself has no coherent Iran policy beyond tweets and explosive strikes; he lacks the imagination to come up with these measures, just as he lacks the intellect to resist them as wrongheaded. The impetus comes from other men around him. And thus far, no man has proven as ambitious, ruthless, and effective as Pompeo in using Trump’s insecurities to consolidate his own portfolio and advance his own incendiary global agenda. It’s tempting to see Pompeo as America’s own Cardinal Richelieu, but that’s an inadequate comparison: No cardinal was ever as powerful or as dangerous to humanity as Pompeo now is.

Adam Weinstein is the national security editor for The New Republic. He previously edited for Task & Purpose, Mother Jones, and the Wall Street Journal

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120

Pompeo is reportedly not running for Senate — here’s why that should spook the GOP

Cody Fenwick

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/pompeo-abruptly-called-off-ukraine-trip-last-month-after-ambassadors-damning-deposition-dropped/

no lnx

Pompeo abruptly called off Ukraine trip last month after ambassador’s damning deposition dropped

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story December 20, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s scheduled trip to Ukraine was called off last month at the last minute after the U.S. ambassador testified in the impeachment inquiry.

President Donald Trump and the State Department dropped the Kyiv trip from Pompeo’s schedule in November after acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor told congressional investigators about the quid pro quo arrangement pushed by Rudy Giuliani, reported The Daily Beast.

Pompeo wanted to avoid the visit after Taylor’s impeachment testimony, which revealed that Ukraine military aid was being held up as leverage against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration announcing political investigations sought by the White House.

Taylor will be sent home from Ukraine early next month one day ahead of Pompeo’s rescheduled visit, and the secretary of state has been careful to avoid direct contact with the veteran diplomat he personally recommended for the job.

Pompeo wants to avoid the Ukraine embassy altogether and will instead hold meetings at his hotel, two sources told The Daily Beast.

The secretary was in Germany in early November when the transcript was released from Taylor’s closed-door deposition, which described a shadow foreign policy directed by EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker.

Pompeo had been scheduled to go on to Ukraine from Germany, but instead his trip was postponed.

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3 jrnlist jailled

Pompeo Calls on Egypt to Respect Press Freedom, After Raid of Mada Masr

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Former CIA officer: Trump and his allies have a long history of bullying intelligence experts who probe Russian election interference

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/former-cia-officer-trump-and-his-allies-have-a-long-history-of-bullying-intelligence-experts-who-probe-russian-election-interference/

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Written by Alex Henderson November 26, 2019

When Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council (NSC) senior director specializing in Russian and European affairs, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on November 21, she stressed that there was zero evidence to support the claim that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the United States’ 2016 presidential election. Nonetheless, the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory persists on the far right. And journalist Alex Finley, in a report for Just Security, discusses the extremes that President Donald Trump’s allies have been willing to go to in the hope of discrediting intelligence on Russian election interference in 2016.

The CrowdStrike conspiracy theory claims that in 2016, the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike conspired with Democrats and the Ukrainian government to frame the Russian government for interfering in the presidential election. According to the false claim that the Ukrainian government — not Russian President Vladimir Putin — was the real villain in 2016, Finley notes, “Trump never could have colluded with Russia, because Russia never did anything wrong.” And Finley notes that Attorney General William Barr has been investigating people in the U.S. intelligence community who have been part of the Russia investigation — and appointed federal prosecutor John Dunham to head that investigation.

Finley explains, “Last month, media outlets reported that Barr’s investigation had become a criminal one. Whether true or not, the claim — much like the public attacks from Trump, Republicans and the conservative media ecosystem — seemed like a clear signal to civil servants — whether in the FBI, the CIA or the NSA — to tread very carefully if they planned to take any actions that came anywhere near the Russia-Trump nexus again.”

:{:{Finley adds, however, that Barr’s investigation “was not the first threatening message sent to the intelligence and law enforcement community” about Russia: Trump and his allies have a long history of going after people who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.}:

For example, Finley points out, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired. And Trump, Finley notes, “has repeatedly attacked FBI investigators Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page on Twitter and elsewhere with particularly prurient and unsettling comments.”}:

Finley observes, “One of Mike Pompeo’s first actions when he became head of the CIA was to interrogate the analysts who had written the report concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and had aimed to help Trump win. More recently, Barr traveled to both the United Kingdom and Italy to meet with intelligence officials in those countries. While there, he asked those foreign governments about the actions of his compatriot American intelligence officers.”

During the Ukraine investigation and the impeachment inquiry, Finley adds, many of the witnesses have been smeared by Trump and his supporters — including Marie Yovanovitch (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine) and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

“What effect does this have on our national security?,” Finley asks. “If our intelligence community becomes reticent to chase down counterintelligence leads because the president or his associates might be involved or have an interest in how they play out, how vulnerable does the country become? The good news is: these civil servants seem like they won’t be cowed.”

Giuliani urged Pompeo to oust Yovanovitch from Ukraine post: Newly released documents

Alex Henderson

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-trove-of-ukraine-docs-exposes-clear-paper-trail-from-rudy-giuliani-to-the-oval-office-to-secretary-pompeo

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New trove of Ukraine docs exposes ‘clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo’

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 24, 2019

A trove of State Department documents obtained late Friday by watchdog group American Oversight provided new details on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s involvement in the White House effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals.

The documents, which the State Department turned over in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, showed that Pompeo spoke to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani by phone at least twice earlier this year as Giuliani was pressing Ukraine to probe former Vice President Joe Biden. At least one of the calls was arranged by Trump assistant Madeleine Westerhout, the documents showed.

Giuliani in March was also orchestrating a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump removed from her post in May.

In April, following his calls with Giuliani, Pompeo also called Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.

American Oversight

@weareoversight

Nov 23, 2019

Replying to @weareoversight

This was just the first production of documents from our first lawsuit seeking the public release of Trump administration Ukraine records. There will be more.

We also have active lawsuits for records from Perry, Mulvaney, Sondland, DOD, and more. https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-contacts-with-ukraine …

The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine - American Oversight

American Oversight is investigating the extent of the administration’s troubling efforts to coerce a foreign government into helping to attack the president’s perceived political enemies.

americanoversight.org

American Oversight

@weareoversight

We can see why Secretary Pompeo refused to release these documents to Congress: the paper trail connects him to Giuliani, showing a March 2019 call right before a call to Rep. Nunes. https://www.americanoversight.org/state-department-releases-ukraine-documents-to-american-oversight …

View image on Twitter

Pompeo, who admitted last month that he was on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has refused to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the newly released documents shed light on the reasons behind Pompeo’s reluctance to testify or hand over information requested by impeachment investigators.

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” Evers said in a statement. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”

“The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders,” added Evers. “That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice.”

In an interview with the New York Times last month, Giuliani acknowledged that he spoke with Pompeo about Ukraine in late March.

As the Times reported late Saturday:

In connection with one such conversation, Mr. Giuliani said he provided Mr. Pompeo a timeline listing what he considered to be key events implicating targets of Mr. Trump, including the Bidens, Ms. Yovanovitch and Ukrainians whom Mr. Giuliani said had disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

Shortly after, Mr. Pompeo “called and said, ‘Do you have any backup?'” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview.

In response, Mr. Giuliani said, he had someone hand-deliver to Mr. Pompeo’s office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr. Giuliani and his associates in January.

The State Department documents come just days after U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee that “everyone was in the loop” on Trump’s effort to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden.

In an interview on MSNBC Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the American Oversight documents confirm Sondland’s testimony.

“These documents show that Giuliani was not freelancing, that he was essentially talking to Secretary Pompeo,” said Lieu. “Everybody was on the same page.”

PoliticusUSA

@politicususa

Rep. @tedlieu says newly released State Department documents show that "everybody was on the same page" regarding Trump's extortion scheme. #ctl #p2

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-trove-of-ukraine-docs-exposes-clear-paper-trail-from-rudy-giuliani-to-the-oval-office-to-secretary-pompeo

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New trove of Ukraine docs exposes ‘clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo’

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 24, 2019

Giuliani in March was also orchestrating a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump removed from her post in May.

In April, following his calls with Giuliani, Pompeo also called Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.

American Oversight

@weareoversight

Nov 23, 2019

Replying to @weareoversight

This was just the first production of documents from our first lawsuit seeking the public release of Trump administration Ukraine records. There will be more.

We also have active lawsuits for records from Perry, Mulvaney, Sondland, DOD, and more. https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-contacts-with-ukraine …

The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine - American Oversight

American Oversight is investigating the extent of the administration’s troubling efforts to coerce a foreign government into helping to attack the president’s perceived political enemies.

americanoversight.org

American Oversight

@weareoversight

View image on Twitter

Pompeo, who admitted last month that he was on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has refused to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry into Trump.

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” Evers said in a statement. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”

In an interview with the New York Times last month, Giuliani acknowledged that he spoke with Pompeo about Ukraine in late March.

As the Times reported late Saturday:

Shortly after, Mr. Pompeo “called and said, ‘Do you have any backup?'” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview.

In an interview on MSNBC Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the American Oversight documents confirm Sondland’s testimony.

“These documents show that Giuliani was not freelancing, that he was essentially talking to Secretary Pompeo,” said Lieu. “Everybody was on the same page.”

PoliticusUSA

@politicususa

Rep. @tedlieu says newly released State Department documents show that "everybody was on the same page" regarding Trump's extortion scheme. #ctl #p2

Embedded video

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/mike-pompeo-reportedly-told-republicans-he-plans-to-resign-to-protect-his-reputation-good-luck-with-that/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/mike-pompeo-accused-of-plotting-escape-route-back-home-during-taxpayer-funded-trips-to-kansas

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Mike Pompeo accused of plotting escape route back home during taxpayer-funded trips to Kansas

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story November 4, 2019

According to the Guardian, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been jetting back and forth between Washington his home state of Kansas for a number of bizarrely political events, including radio interviews, “workplace development” talks with first daughter Ivanka Trump, and — on one strange occasion — handing out State Department buttons emblazoned with “#Swagger.”

kylie ??

@kcylizzle

Oct 25, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be speaking with Wichita State students this morning in an effort to recruit students to work as diplomats for the State Department. It’s unclear how these students were chosen to participate in this event.

View image on Twitter

kylie ??

@kcylizzle

These buttons were just passed out to students.

View image on Twitter

All of this has renewed the on-again, off-again speculation that Pompeo may be planning to run for Senate in 2020, as Sen. Pat Roberts is retiring — something that he has vehemently denied he is doing.

It is widely expected that if Pompeo were to run for Senate, he would lock the seat down, as he remains popular there and Republicans have not lost a Kansas Senate race since 1932.

But if he isn’t, many political figures note, then he is wasting everyone’s time and money. The Kansas City Star ran an editorial saying Pompeo has “better things to do” than repeatedly fly to Kansas, and he “should quit his rather important day job” if he’s really flirting with a run, and Senate Democrats have filed a complaint asking watchdogs to look into his Kansas trips.

Even without Pompeo speculation, the Kansas Senate race is already shaping up to be far more interesting than usual with Roberts stepping aside. Congressman Roger Marshall appears to be the pick of GOP leadership, but flamboyant former Trump ally and anti-voting-rights crusader Kris Kobach is also running fresh off his failed bid for governor. Meanwhile, Democrats have a star recruit in state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who was until recently a Republican before defecting over the party’s extremism.

an 1019

Pompeo doubles down on conspiracy theory claiming Biden and Obama withheld Ukraine assistance

Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead5

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos October 31, 2019

It’s often forgotten that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended West Point, where he took a pledge to hold honesty above all. And the person who seems to forget it most often is Mike Pompeo.

The Washington Post reports that Pompeo appeared on Fox News Wednesday evening not only to profess his support for an entire series of definitively debunked, never-made-any-sense-to-begin-with conspiracy theories—such as American company CrowdStrike ferrying a secret “missing” DNC server to Ukraine, and the Steele dossier actually being written by a Ukrainian hired by Hillary Clinton. Pompeo refused to condemn any of the things that Trump was asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate, even though they aren’t just false—they are genuinely bizarre.

Then Pompeo made his own contribution to the Hall of Ludicrous by adding a new conspiracy theory, one that involves President Barack Obama: “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 weapons to Ukraine. They’ll have to answer for that. Maybe — maybe I just don’t have the full story.”

Here’s Pompeo—Secretary of State Pompeo—suggesting that Ukraine didn’t receive military aid from the Obama administration. Except it received $1 billion in aid. And, unlike Trump, Obama did not delay that aid for a personal political favor or send his personal attorney to Kyiv to badger officials into repeating conspiracy theories. Pompeo is blaming a failure to provide assistance that never happened on a scandal that never was. And he knows that he does have the full story—he just doesn’t like it.

But maybe Pompeo is talking about the bipartisan decision to restrict offensive weapons sales to Ukraine over concerns that the struggle in Ukraine could become a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. A bipartisan concern that was written into the language authorizing military assistance. If that’s the case, maybe he should consider something that was not a conspiracy theory—that Donald Trump stepped in to remove that idea from the Republican platform.

Pompeo was also asked about testimony that the “transcript” provided concerning the Trump phone call with Zelensky was incomplete. He replied by calling that story “leaks from Democrats” and said, “What I know is I was on the call, I listened to the call.”

He was on the call, so he could explain anything that’s missing from the document provided by the White House. If he was concerned about telling the truth.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/mike-pompeos-state-department-homepage-advocates-being-a-christian-leader/

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Mike Pompeo’s State Department homepage advocates ‘being a Christian leader’

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement October 14, 2019

The website of the U.S, Department of State currently features a photograph of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the words, “Being a Christian Leader.”

The link on the State Dept. homepage goes to a video and the text of Pompeo’s speech to the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville, Tennessee on October 11.

Is separation of church and state dead?

The website of the U.S, Department of State currently features a photograph of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the words, “Being a Christian Leader.”

The link on the State Dept. homepage goes to a video and the text of Pompeo’s speech to the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville, Tennessee on October 11.

Secretary Pompeo’s speech focuses on how he leads the Dept. of State as a devout Christian. He says he keeps a Bible open on his desk and refers to it during the day.

That in its self would not be exceptionally disturbing except that Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, has said the Bible “informs everything I do.”

He has said it’s “possible,” when asked if God made Trump president “to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace.”

And he has said the wars in the Middle East are a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”

Here’s how The New York Times explained Pompeo’s biblical views just this past March:

Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God.

Mr. Pompeo talks about the rapture. “We will continue to fight these battles,” he said at a “God and Country Rally” in 2015, because there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”

An L.A. Times opinion piece, referring to those remarks, said Pompeo “has his eye on an End Times cleansing.”

The State Dept. advertised Pompeo’s speech and even broadcast it live on the State Dept.’s website:

On October 11, @SecPompeo addresses the 2019 American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference in Nashville. Watch live on https://t.co/58Uc9lIgDz or https://t.co/O2lYyHUIHa at 12:00 PM EDT/ 11:00 AM CDT. pic.twitter.com/Ns5e0TyBXa

— Department of State (@StateDept) October 11, 2019

A few responses via Twitter:

Why are Republicans such as William Barr “willing to destroy the norms of both justice &… democracy…? To this observer, it seems it is the overwhelming desire to impose…a theocratic cultural agenda coupled w/ a..brand of capitalism rapidly devolving into a new feudalism.” https://t.co/NwJQu8g92R

— Jennifer Cohn (@jennycohn1) October 14, 2019

Holy Hell. This is the home page of https://t.co/sfyrXv8tpo. pic.twitter.com/FsE3IJBPlf

— Derek DelGaudio (@derek_del) October 14, 2019

Once again, anybody want to dispute my suggestion of an “evangelical caliphate?”https://t.co/hcdYOIZoHq

— I.M Hydrogen (@ChuckGore2) October 14, 2019

separation of church and state uh what https://t.co/uJL0tHlEx5 pic.twitter.com/UIRjsGZzco

— James K. Yu (@jyu_pdx) October 14, 2019

The home page of the State Department right now. If you believe in the separation of church and state, make sure you leave them a comment. https://t.co/bgEKT4oI0a pic.twitter.com/jOCet0avnh

— Juliana Aldous (@jaldous) October 14, 2019

What fresh hell is this?? I do not want religion in my government and I do not want the government in my religion. Separation of church and state protects both. https://t.co/FQdXxdfURW

— Carly B (@carly__bird) October 14, 2019

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/understanding-trumps-whackiest-conspiracy-theory-to-date/

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Understanding Trump’s whackiest conspiracy theory to date

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon October 7, 2019

Here’s what’s OK: If we feel there’s corruption, like I feel there was in the 2016 campaign — there was tremendous corruption against me — if we feel there’s corruption, we have a right to go to a foreign country. And just so you know — just so you know, I was investigated. I was investigated. Okay? Me. Me. In my campaign — I ran, I won. I was invest- — you won’t say that, will you? I was investigated. I was investigated. And they think it could have been by U.K. They think it could have been by Australia. They think it could have been by Italy. So when you get down to it, I was investigated by the Obama administration. By the Obama administration I was investigated.

— Donald Trump, Oct. 4, 2019

Last Friday I wrote about the origins of the Joe Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory, when the same professional hitmen who pushed the “crooked Hillary” story about alleged influence-peddling with the Clinton Foundation produced a book alleging that Biden had leveraged his power as vice president to help his son’s business. (The evidence shows that not only did Biden not do that, the actions he took were actually detrimental to his son’s case.)

All that is almost hilarious in light of this AP report that broke late on Sunday night in which it was revealed thatclose associates of Trump’s fixer Rudy Giuliani and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have been doing some lucrative influence-peddling of their own, trying to leverage their relationships for shares in a natural gas company in Ukraine. Trump is now trying to blame Perry for that misguided phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to the impeachment inquiry. It’s never a dull moment in this Ukraine scandal.

It’s clear, however, as the quote above shows, that while Trump was happy to tar his political rival Joe Biden, his true interest in Ukraine lies in his ongoing obsession with a daft conspiracy theory that he and Russia were both set up by the FBI, the CIA and the foreign services of several key U.S. allies, along with Ukraine, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The ostensible goal was to destroy his campaign and if that didn’t work, his presidency. Trump seems to have convinced Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and at least a few U.S. senators that this is a legitimate line of inquiry.

Barr has been running around the world, accompanied at times by the special prosecutor he assigned to investigate the matter, interviewing the heads of the intelligence services of various allies. He asked the president himself to intervene with certain heads of state to get their cooperation with the probe.

The specific aspect of the conspiracy theory that took Barr to Italy this past week was laid out in detail by Lucian K. Truscott IV in Salon on Sunday. In a nutshell, it all revolves around onetime Trump “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious “professor” who told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton — which Papadopoulos in turn drunkenly shared with the Australian high commissioner to the U.K. in a pub a few weeks later. That led to the Aussies sounding the alarm to the U.S., which led to the FBI taking a look to see whether Russians were trying to interfere in the presidential election.

Giuliani has been running his mouth about this for months calling Mifsud a “counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian” and Papadapoulos has been tweeting as if he’s a high level investigator for the Department of Justice:

George Papadopoulos

@GeorgePapa19

AG Barr has been on official travel in Italy for the past two days. As I explained months ago, on Fox and in my book, Mifsud was an Italian operative handled by the CIA. Italy holds the keys to the kingdom. Right government, right time. ????????

He’s quite the super-sleuth. It’s his wild imagination that has fueled this particular conspiracy theory, along with the bizarre 4chan storyline that suggests the security firm CrowdStrike framed Russia on behalf of the DNC. Trump mentioned that in the phone call with Zelensky, but seems to have embellished the conspiracy theory even beyond the ludicrous narrative right-wingers had previously laid out. According to NBC News, when the president said “I guess you have one of your wealthy people. … The server, they say Ukraine has it,” people who knew the context thought that “Trump’s call felt detached from any sense of logic.” How unusual.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., seems to think this whole thing makes sense, however. He appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday and shared his thoughts on the matter:

@MeetThePress

WATCH: @SenRonJohnson is asked why he winced & brings up a "conspiracy theory."@chucktodd: "I have no idea why we're going here. ... Can we please answer the question I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him?" #MTP

Embedded video

If that sounded a bit scattered, here’s Pompeo pretending that everyone in the administration is just doing their jobs:

“It is not only appropriate, but it is our duty to investigate if we think there was interference in the election of 2016,” Mr. Pompeo said in Athens. “I think everyone recognizes that governments have an obligation — indeed, a duty — to ensure that elections happen with integrity, without interference from any government, whether that’s the Ukrainian government or any other. And so inquiries with respect to that are completely important.”

He added: “There’s been some suggestion somehow that it would be inappropriate for the United States government to engage in that activity, and I see it just precisely the opposite. I see our duty to engage in activity that ensures that we have fair, free elections.”

Keep in mind that Pompeo was first appointed as Trump’s CIA director, and led his own investigation which found no wrongdoing by the agency. Yet he came out and gave that sanctimonious little speech legitimizing this loony conspiracy theory. Even he has to pay homage to Trump and his consigliere Giuliani’s febrile fantasies. Frankly, he doesn’t seem to mind.

The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. allies are becoming increasingly irritated by this ridiculous crusade. Barr is going outside the normal channels, riling up internal politics in their countries andbasically making a hash of America’s foreign policy.He and Pompeo may just be trying to soothe Trump’s massive ego — or maybe they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too. In the end, that doesn’t much matter. The most powerful nation on earth is clearly being run by a bunch of kooks. It’s hard to see why anyone else would ever trust us again.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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State Department Inspector General Steve Linick provided "assorted news clippings and conspiratorial memos" on alleged Democratic wrongdoing in Ukraine that "he did not assign credibility to" on Wednesday in a private committee hearing that he requested, the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: Interview notes involving Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and "Ukrainian officials about the Bidens" appeared to be among the materials, which were addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, per NYT.

Giuliani was subpoenaed this week by the House Intelligence Committee to produce documents by Oct. 15 related to his and President Trump's alleged efforts to push Ukraine's government to investigate Joe Biden.
Giuliani has yet to state if he would cooperate with the subpoena, but he said he would comply with the impeachment inquiry if Trump tells him to.

The big picture: The whistleblower complaint — which cites a phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump — alleges that the president used "the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election" and claims that Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to be involved in the effort as well.

What they're saying:

“The briefing and documents raise troubling questions about apparent efforts inside and outside the Trump Administration to target specific officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden's son and then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch, who was abruptly removed as Ambassador in May after a sustained campaign against her by the President’s agent, Rudy Giuliani.

The documents provided by the Inspector General included a package of disinformation, debunked conspiracy theories, and baseless allegations in an envelope marked 'White House' and containing folders labeled 'Trump Hotel.' These documents also reinforce concern that the President and his allies sought to use the machinery of the State Department to further the President’s personal political interests."

— Joint statement from the chairs of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform committees

Background: Linick said the materials were delivered to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "earlier this year from someone purporting to be at the White House," per the Times, and "a legal adviser at the department" passed it on to Linick's office.

Linick "doubted" the origin of the materials, but "thought lawmakers should have it in light of their investigative work," NYT reports.

Go deeper: Fact check: What Joe and Hunter Biden actually did in Ukraine

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-pompeo-doctrine-a-formula-for-catastrophe

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The Pompeo Doctrine: A formula for catastrophe

Written by Michael Klare / TomDispatch September 12, 2019

Donald Trump got the headlines as usual — but don’t be fooled. It wasn’t Trumpism in action this August, but what we should all now start referring to as the Pompeo Doctrine. Yes, I’m referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and, when it comes to the Arctic region, he has a lot more than buying Greenland on his mind.

In mid-August, as no one is likely to forget, President Trump surprised international observers by expressing an interest in purchasing Greenland, a semi-autonomous region of Denmark. Most commentators viewed the move as just another example of the president’s increasingly erratic behavior. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen termed the very notion of such a deal “absurd,” leading Trump, in an outburst of pique, to call her comments “nasty” and cancel a long-scheduled state visit to Copenhagen.

A deeper look at that incident and related administration moves, however, suggests quite a different interpretation of what’s going on, with immense significance for the planet and even human civilization. Under the prodding of Mike Pompeo, the White House increasingly views the Arctic as a key arena for future great-power competition, with the ultimate prize being an extraordinary trove of valuable resources, including oil, natural gas, uranium, zinc, iron ore, gold, diamonds, and rare earth minerals. Add in one more factor: though no one in the administration is likely to mention the forbidden term “climate change” or “climate crisis,” they all understand perfectly well that global warming is what’s making such a resource scramble possible.

This isn’t the first time that great powers have paid attention to the Arctic. That region enjoyed some strategic significance during the Cold War period, when both the United States and the Soviet Union planned to use its skies as passageways for nuclear-armed missiles and bombers dispatched to hit targets on the other side of the globe. Since the end of that era, however, it has largely been neglected. Frigid temperatures, frequent storms, and waters packed with ice prevented most normal air and maritime travel, so — aside from the few Indigenous peoples who had long adapted to such conditions — who would want to venture there?

Climate change is, however, already altering the situation in drastic ways: temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet, melting parts of the polar ice cap and exposing once-inaccessible waters and islands to commercial development. Oil and natural gas reserves have been discovered in offshore areas previously (but no longer) covered by sea ice most of the year. Meanwhile, new mining opportunities are emerging in, yes, Greenland!Worried that other countries, including China and Russia, might reap the benefits of such a climate-altered landscape, the Trump administration has already launched an all-out drive to ensure American dominance there, even at the risk of future confrontation and conflict.

The scramble for the Arctic’s resources was launched early in this century when the world’s major energy firms, led by BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Russian gas giant Gazprom, began exploring for oil and gas reserves in areas only recently made accessible by retreating sea ice.Those efforts gained momentum in 2008, after the U.S. Geological Survey published a report, Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal, indicating that as much as one-third of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lay in areas north of the Arctic Circle. Much of this untapped fossil fuel largess was said to lie beneath the Arctic waters adjoining Alaska (that is, the United States), Canada, Greenland (controlled by Denmark), Norway, and Russia — the so-called “Arctic Five.”

Under existing international law, codified in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal nations possess the right to exploit undersea resources up to 200 nautical miles from their shoreline (and beyond if their continental shelf extends farther than that). The Arctic Five have all laid claim to “exclusive economic zones” (EEZs) in those waters or, in the case of the United States (which has not ratified UNCLOS), announced its intention to do so. Most known oil and gas reserves are found within those EEZs, although some are thought to be in overlapping or even contested areas beyond that 200-mile limit, including the polar region itself. Whoever owns Greenland, of course, possesses the right to develop its EEZ.

For the most part, the Arctic Five have asserted their intent to settle any disputes arising from contested claims through peaceful means, the operating principle behind the formation in 1996 of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization for states with territory above the Arctic Circle (including the Arctic Five, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden). Meeting every two years, it provides a forum in which, at least theoretically, leaders of those countries and the Indigenous peoples living there can address common concerns and work towards cooperative solutions — and it had indeed helped dampen tensions in the region. In recent years, however, isolating the Arctic from mounting U.S. (and NATO) hostilities toward Russia and China or from the global struggle over vital resources has proven increasingly difficult. By May 2019, when Pompeo led an American delegation to the council’s most recent meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, hostility and the urge to grab future resources had already spilled into the open.

Reaping the Arctic’s Riches

Usually a forum for anodyne statements about international cooperation and proper environmental stewardship, the lid was blown off the latest Arctic Council meeting in May whenPompeo delivered an unabashedly martial and provocative speech that deserves far more attention than it got at the time. So let’s take a little tour of what may prove a historic proclamation (in the grimmest sense possible) of a new Washington doctrine for the Far North.

“In its first two decades, the Arctic Council has had the luxury of focusing almost exclusively on scientific collaboration, on cultural matters, on environmental research,” the secretary of state began mildly. These were, he said, “all important themes, very important, and we should continue to do those. But no longer do we have that luxury. We’re entering a new age of strategic engagement in the Arctic, complete with new threats to the Arctic and its real estate, and to all of our interests in that region.”

In what turned out to be an ultra-hardline address, Pompeo claimed that we were now in a new era in the Arctic. Because climate change — a phrase Pompeo, of course, never actually uttered — is now making it ever more possible to exploit the region’s vast resource riches, a scramble to gain control of them is now officially underway. That competition for resources has instantly become enmeshed in a growing geopolitical confrontation between the U.S., Russia, and China, generating new risks of conflict.

On the matter of resource exploitation, Pompeo could hardly contain his enthusiasm. Referring to the derision that greeted William Seward’s purchase of Alaska in 1857, he declared:

“Far from the barren backcountry that many thought it to be in Seward’s time, the Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of its undiscovered gas, and an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources.”

Of equal attraction, he noted, was the possibility of vastly increasing maritime commerce through newly de-iced trans-Arctic trade routes that will link the Euro-Atlantic region with Asia. “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” he enthused. “This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days… Arctic sea lanes could come [to be] the 21st century’s Suez and Panama Canals.” That such “steady reductions in sea ice” are the sole consequence of climate change went unmentioned, but so did another reality of our warming world. If the Arctic one day truly becomes the northern equivalent of a tropical passageway like the Suez or Panama canals, that will likely mean that parts of those southerly areas will have become the equivalents of uninhabitable deserts.

As such new trade and drilling opportunities arise, Pompeo affirmed, the United States intends to be out front in capitalizing on them. He then began bragging about what the Trump administration had already accomplished, including promoting expanded oil and gas drilling in offshore waters and also freeing up “energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” a pristine stretch of northern Alaska prized by environmentalists as a sanctuary for migrating caribou and other at-risk species. Additional efforts to exploit the region’s vital resources, he promised, are scheduled for the years ahead.

A New Arena for Competition (and Worse)

Ideally, Pompeo noted placidly, competition for the Arctic’s resources will be conducted in an orderly, peaceful manner. The United States, he assured his listeners, believes in “free and fair competition, open, by the rule of law.” But other countries, he added ominously, especially China and Russia, won’t play by that rulebook much of the time and so must be subject to careful oversight and, if need be, punitive action.

China, he pointed out, is already developing trade routes in the Arctic, and establishing economic ties with key nations there. Unlike the United States (which already has multiple military bases in the Arctic, including one at Thule in Greenland, and so has a well-established presence there), Pompeo claimed that Beijing is surreptitiously using such supposedly economic activities for military purposes, including, heinously enough, spying on U.S. ballistic missile submarines operating in the region, while intimidating its local partners into acquiescence.

He then cited events in the distant South China Sea, where the Chinese have indeed militarized a number of tiny uninhabited islands (outfitting them with airstrips, missile batteries, and the like) and the U.S. has responded by sending its warships into adjacent waters. He did so to warn of similar future military stand-offs and potential clashes in the Arctic. “Let’s just ask ourselves, do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?” The answer, he assured his listeners, is “pretty clear.” (And I’m sure you can guess what it is.)

The secretary of state then wielded even stronger language in describing “aggressive Russian behavior in the Arctic.” In recent years, he claimed, the Russians have built hundreds of new bases in the region, along with new ports and air-defense capabilities. “Russia is already leaving snow prints in the form of army boots” there, a threat that cannot be ignored. “Just because the Arctic is a place of wilderness does not mean it should become a place of lawlessness. It need not be the case. And we stand ready to ensure that it does not become so.”

And here we get to the heart of Pompeo’s message: the United States will, of course, “respond” by enhancing its own military presence in the Arctic to better protect U.S. interests, while countering Chinese and Russian inroads in the region:

“Under President Trump, we are fortifying America’s security and diplomatic presence in the area. On the security side, partly in response to Russia’s destabilizing activities, we are hosting military exercises, strengthening our force presence, rebuilding our icebreaker fleet, expanding Coast Guard funding, and creating a new senior military post for Arctic Affairs inside of our own military.”

To emphasize the administration’s sincerity, Pompeo touted the largest NATO and U.S. Arctic military maneuvers since the Cold War era, the recently completed “Trident Juncture” exercise (which he incorrectly referred to as “Trident Structure”), involving some 50,000 troops. Although the official scenario for Trident Juncture spoke of an unidentified “aggressor” force, few observers had any doubt that the allied team was assembled to repel a hypothetical Russian invasion of Norway, where the simulated combat took place.

Implementing the Doctrine

And so you have the broad outlines of the new Pompeo Doctrine, centered on the Trump administration’s truly forbidden topic: the climate crisis. In the most pugnacious manner imaginable, that doctrine posits a future of endless competition and conflict in the Arctic, growing ever more intense as the planet warms and the ice cap melts. The notion of the U.S. going nose-to-nose with the Russians and Chinese in the Far North, while exploiting the region’s natural resources, has clearly been circulating in Washington. By August, it had obviously already become enough of a commonplace in the White House (not to speak of the National Security Council and the Pentagon), for the president to offer to buy Greenland.

And when it comes to resources and future military conflicts, it wasn’t such a zany idea. After all, Greenland does have abundant natural resources and also houses that U.S. base in Thule. A relic of the Cold War, the Thule facility, mainly a radar base, is already being modernized, at a cost of some $300 million, to better track Russian missile launches. Clearly, key officials in Washington view Greenland as a valuable piece of real estate in the emerging geopolitical struggle Pompeo laid out, an assessment that clearly wormed its way into President Trump’s consciousness as well.

Iceland and Norway also play key roles in Pompeo’s and the Pentagon’s new strategic calculus. Another former Cold War facility, a base at Keflavik in Iceland has been reoccupied by the Navy and is now being used in antisubmarine warfare missions. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has stationed several hundred combat troops at bases near Trondheim, Norway, the first permanent deployment of foreign soldiers on Norwegian soil since World War II. In 2018, the Pentagon even reactivated the Navy’s defunct Second Fleet, investing it with responsibility for protecting the North Atlantic as well as the Arctic’s maritime approaches, including those abutting Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Consider these signs of heating-up times.

And all of this is clearly just the beginning of a major buildup in and regular testing of the ability of the U.S. military to operate in the Far North. As part of Exercise Trident Juncture, for example, the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and its flotilla of support ships were sent into the Norwegian Sea, the first time a U.S. carrier battle group had sailed above the Arctic Circle since the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Similarly, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer recently announced plans to send surface warships on trans-Arctic missions, another new military move. (U.S. nuclear submarines make such journeys regularly, sailing beneath the sea ice.)

The Irony of Arctic Melting

Although Secretary Pompeo and his underlings never mention the term climate change, every aspect of his new doctrine is a product of that phenomenon. As humanity puts more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global temperatures continue to rise, the Arctic ice cap will continue to shrink. That, in turn, will make exploitation of the region’s abundant oil and natural gas reserves ever more possible, leading to yet more burning of fossil fuels, further warming, and ever faster melting. In other words, the Pompeo Doctrine is a formula for catastrophe.

Add to this obvious abuse of the planet the likelihood that rising temperatures and increasing storm activity will render oil and gas extraction in parts of the world ever less viable. Many scientists now believe that daytime summer temperatures in oil-producing areas of the Middle East, for instance, are likely to average 120 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, making outdoor human labor of most sorts deadly. At the same time, more violent hurricanes and other tropical storms passing over the ever-warming waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico could imperil the continuing operation of offshore rigs there (and in other similarly storm-prone drilling areas). Unless humanity has converted to alternative fuels by then, the Arctic may be viewed as the world’s primary source of fossil fuels, only intensifying the struggle to control its vital resources.

Perhaps no aspect of humanity’s response to the climate crisis is more diabolical than this. The greater the number of fossil fuels we consume, the more rapidly we alter the Arctic, inviting the further extraction of just such fuels and their contribution to global warming. With other regions increasingly less able to sustain a fossil-fuel extraction economy, a continued addiction to oil will ensure the desolation of the once-pristine Far North as it is transformed into a Pompeo-style arena for burning conflict and civilizational disaster.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. His new book, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books), will be published in November.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/mike-pompeo-celebrates-the-defeat-of-an-international-probe-into-possible-u-s-war-crimes/

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Mike Pompeo celebrates the defeat of an international probe into possible U.S. war crimes

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams August 28, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday affirmed President Donald Trump’s disdain for the International Criminal Court when he appeared to boast of the White House’s successful bullying effort to stop the court from launching a probe into possible war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pompeo made the remarks in a “Celebrating Americanism in Our Foreign Policy” speech at the American Legion National Convention in Indianapolis

“Americanism means taking care of our own,” said Pompeo.

“We stopped international courts from prosecuting our service members,” Pompeo continued, adding that the potential probe “was an outrage.”

In April, the ICC announced that it rejected a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Outgoing ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested the investigation in 2017, saying at the time that there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that war crimes were committed by the Taliban, Afghan National Security Forces, U.S. armed forces, and the CIA. That move won the praise of human rights organizations and triggered over one million statements from alleged Afghan victims.

But the potential prosecutions also prompted threats from the White House, with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, warning of sanctions against ICC officials if they moved ahead with probes into U.S. or Israeli war crimes.

Pompeo confirmed earlier this year that the administration would revoke or deny visas for ICC personnel who try to investigate or prosecute U.S. officials or key allies for potential war crimes. A month later, in April, the administration followed through and revoked prosecutor Bensouda’s visa for entry into the U.S.

Trump, for his part, celebrated the rejected war crimes probe as an “international victory.”

Human rights groups had a notably different takeaway.

“It is outrageous,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU’s group’s human rights program, “that victims of war crimes are far less likely to get justice for well-documented atrocities because of the Trump administration’s authoritarian efforts to sabotage an investigation before it could even get started.”

“No one except the world’s most brutal regimes win,” Dakwar said, “when we weaken and sabotage international institutions established to fight impunity and hold the human rights abusers accountable.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/mike-pompeo-torn-to-shreds-by-former-us-officials-in-brutal-new-yorker-profile-a-heat-seeking-missile-for-trumps-ass/

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...One former American ambassador, meanwhile, went even further and described Pompeo as “a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”

During the 2016 campaign, Pompeo warned that Trump would be “an authoritarian President who ignored our Constitution.” Three years later, the report says, Pompeo has rationalized his past reservations about the president by believing that God may have chosen him to enact His will.

“Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who keeps an open Bible on his desk, now says it’s possible that God raised up Trump as a modern Queen Esther, the Biblical figure who convinced the King of Persia to spare the Jewish people,” the New Yorker reports. “He defines his own job as serving the President, whatever the President asks of him.”

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pompeo hu rights

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/not-a-straight-white-male-us-religious-conservatives-are-coming-for-you/

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Not a straight white male? US religious conservatives are coming for you

CPAC is hosted by the American Conservative Union. Image via Wikimedia Commons / Michael Vadon.

Written by OpenDemocracy.Net August 4, 2019

by Jessica Stern, Yifat Susskind

Any schoolchild in the United States knows that the US Declaration of Independenceguarantees individuals’ rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Now, imagine what these principles mean for right-wingers and religious fundamentalists: where “life” refers to fetuses; “liberty” includes the prerogative to discriminate against LGBTIQ people; and “the pursuit of happiness” is reserved for straight, white patriarchs.

For more nightmare fuel, look no further than the new government body that Secretary of StateMike Pompeo announced earlier this month: The Commission on Unalienable Rights. For the uninitiated: this project’s name might sound progressive, but it’s most definitely not.

Everything we’ve heard about this Commission is full of coded language that’s about as subtle as a brick through a window. This isn’t business as usual – even for the Trump administration. It represents an acceleration of a longstanding fundamentalist agenda.

According to its statement of intent, the Commission is needed as human rights “discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”.

In case you’re wondering how to distinguish “natural” rights, they’re the ones bestowed by God (at least according to Pompeo’s commissioners). One of them, Peter Berkowitz, argues that Christianity is the source of all human rights. Another, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, sees marriage equality for LGBTIQ people as a sign of the “End Times”.

In typical fundamentalist fashion, this project seeks to impose the same interpretation of law and rights used for generations to uphold slavery, genocide, categorical disenfranchisement, marital rape, domestic violence, and the criminalisation of LGBTIQ lives. Turning the clock back 200 years: this is how Pompeo proposes to make America great again.

In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, theSecretary of State attacks “politicians and bureaucrats [who have created] new rights”, and thus “blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments”. He also asserts that “rights claims are often aimed more at rewarding interest groups and dividing humanity into subgroups”.

But people whose rights are in danger because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other real or perceived identity are not “interest groups”. We are the majority of the world. And we’ve fought for generations to ensure that human rights frameworks are truly inclusive of all people. Now, this Commission wants to undo our gains.

The Commission chair, former US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, says it will “work at the level of principle, not policy”. This should set off alarm bells. Policies, after all, can be reversed. But principles set the parameters of what kinds of policies are even possible. That’s their real aim: to circumscribe the range of acceptable ideas, scale back hard-won universal rights, and thus limit our possibilities.

We expect they’ll start with foreign policy, taking a page from a tried-and-true playbook. For decades, what American ultra-conservatives couldn’t get away with at home, they’ve exported abroad – through such heinous policies as the so-called Global Gag Rule, and the Helms Amendment, for instance, which have limited women’s access to safe abortion services around the world.

And once these right-wing policies are established – and legitimated – in foreign policy, they’re brought home to roost. Recently, a US court of appeals ruled that Trump’s Domestic Gag Rule can go into effect (further limiting abortion access here as well).

As the directors of international organisations for women and LGBTIQ people, OutRight Action International, and MADRE, we’re working to create a world of human rights and gender justice, where all people live free from violence and discrimination.

This work threatens the aims of ultra-conservatives, whose worldview depends on women being subservient within societies and LGBTIQ people disappearing altogether.

Their frontal assault is against abortion and the rights of LGBTIQ people, but that’s only their opening salvo. Unless you are part of the narrow demographic of rich, white men deemed to have rights in 1776, they’re coming for you too. In fact, their ideology threatens the vast majority of people – which is one reason it must be justified as “natural” and God-given.

The right’s concerted attack on reproductive rights and LGBTIQ people reflects the centrality of gender as a system for asserting the control and domination they seek. They target us because we’re upending that system. But allying feminist and LGBTIQ rights movements is more than a mutual defense pact: it’s a strategy to defeat the right.

Just last month, our organisations won a major victory after a year-long campaign around a pending international treaty on crimes against humanity. We ensured that this draft treaty dropped an outdated definition of gender, affirming the rights of all people.

In that campaign, we saw many of the same attacks that are now embedded in Pompeo’s new Commission – including claims that we were assaulting the ‘natural order’ and that our advocacy threatened traditional conceptions of rights.

One right-wing organisation C-FAM even claimed that our victory represented an attack by homosexual men on “our mothers and our sisters and our daughters”. That might seem a strange charge against an effort led jointly by LGBTIQ and women’s organisations, but they see the threat represented by our unified efforts and seek to drive a wedge between us.

One of the greatest successes of human rights advocates over generations is this: When our own governments and constitutions fail us, we can turn to international human rights to seek justice and reparation. We can share our testimonies about the abuses we’ve endured and, perhaps most importantly, change the global conversation. In doing so, we’ve influenced policies and practices at home and around the world.

Attacks on human rights, gender protections, and the multilateral system are a transparent attempt to close down that channel of progressive change-making. But by aligning our efforts as women’s and LGBTIQ rights organisations, and making common cause with other progressive movements, we can face down this latest assault.

Right-wingers are not coming after us because we’re weak. They’re coming after us because they’re afraid, we’re strong, and we know how to take them on.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-trump-administration-is-abolishing-the-very-idea-of-human-rights-as-a-part-of-american-identity/

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The Trump administration is abolishing the very idea of human rights as a part of the American identity

Written by Karen J. Greenberg / Tom Dispatch July 25, 2019

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Grimm’s fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Terrified by cruel conditions at home, the brother and sister flee, winding their way, hungry and scared, through unknown woods. There, they encounter an old woman who lures them in with promises of safety. Instead, she locks one of them in a cage and turns the other into a servant, as she prepares to devour them both.

This article originally appeared on Tom Dispatch.

Written in nineteenth-century Germany, it should resonate eerily in today’s America. In place of Hansel and Gretel, we would, of course, have to focus on girls and boys by the hundreds fleeing cruelty and hunger in Central America, believing that they will find a better life in the United States, only to be thrown into cages by forces far more powerful and agents much crueler than that wicked old woman. In the story, there are no politics; there is only good and bad, right and wrong.

Rather than, as in that fairy tale, register the suffering involved in the captivity and punishment of those children at the U.S.-Mexican border, the administration has chosen a full-bore defense of its policies and so has taken a giant step in a larger mission: redefining (or more precisely trying to abolish) the very idea of human rights as a part of the country’s identity.

This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left no doubt: the reality of those children locked in cages, deprived of the most basic needs, and brazenly abused by the administration he works for has been an essential part of the Trump team’s determination to abandon human rights more generally. That willingness to leave children unprotected is part of a far larger message, not merely an unfortunate byproduct of ill-thought out and clumsy actions by an overwhelmed border police force.

Children in Detention Camps

The story of the children at the border is indeed gruesome. The United States has long had migrants pushing at its southern border, often in larger numbers than at present. In fact, since the 1980s, the numbers crossing that border exceeded one million in 19 different years. While the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to estimate that current immigration rates are on track to exceed one million by September, many other experts don’t think it will even happen this year.

What’s genuinely new with the current border crossings is the number of children among the migrants. According to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan’s sobering recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the presence of such children has risen 72% in recent years. Some even come “unaccompanied.” Others belong to migrant families. And while last month the government officially stopped its cruel policy of separating families, leaving many of those children (even toddlers and babies) alone in custody, Vox reports that “at any given time, for the past several weeks, more than 2,000 children have been held in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol without their parents.”

The conditions in the camps, strewn along the U.S. borderlands from Arizona to Texas, are shameful and fall most harshly on those very children. A recent Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report, issued in redacted form just days before the July 4th holiday celebrating the birth of this country as a beacon of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” described the staggering squalor and danger at such confinement facilities. There, children were often deprived of changes of clothes, beds, hot meals, toothbrushes, soap, showers, even adequate medical attention. Other eyewitness accounts have provided graphic details on the nature and scale of the deprivation, showing us children in soiled diapers, living with the stench of urine, sleeping on concrete floors, many weeping. On the somewhat more civilized floor of the Senate, members were told of children sleeping outside, exposed to the elements, and of the spoiled food at the camps.

Add to this the emotional toll that family separations have wrought on thousands of young people, as a new report issued by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee reveals and as others have documented. An El Paso immigration lawyer visiting one facility, for instance, described seeing a young boy who had scratched his own face until it bled. There are first-hand accounts by visitors to the camps of children trying to choke themselves with the lanyards from their own identification cards and others who dreamed about escaping by jumping out of windows high above the ground.

No wonder at least seven children have died while in such circumstances and many more are suffering from lice, scabies, chickenpox and other afflictions. Yet when doctors from the American Association of Pediatricians traveled to the camps to offer their help, their services were refused. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, herself a pediatrician, has labeled the situation of the migrants “appalling” and noted that “several U.N. human rights bodies have found that the detention of migrant children may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that is prohibited by international law.” Others have been less circumspect, explicitly comparing the treatment of the children to torture.

It’s hard not to assume that, however overwhelmed CBP may be, at least some of this treatment is intentional. Why else turn away doctors offering help or refuse supplies of donated aid sent by worried citizens? Why arrest a humanitarian aid volunteer who gave food and water to two ill and desperate undocumented Central American migrants and tried to get them medical help? The administration acknowledges that the overall situation is dire, but its officials on the spot have basically thrown up their hands, complaining that they have been “overwhelmed” by the situation they created, are “not trained to separate children,” and are powerless to address the problem of scarce resources.

While those on the ground have claimed helplessness in the face of the challenge, the rest of the administration refuses even to admit to the appalling conditions. (“They are run beautifully,” said President Trump of the border facilities, blaming the Democrats for any problems there.) Instead, top officials have repeatedly called the disgracefully unacceptable acceptable. Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who bore responsibility for creating much of the mess, assured Congress that the children were “well taken care of,” claiming that “we have the highest standards.” Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions echoed her words. “The children,” he insisted, “are well cared for. In fact, they get better care than a lot of American kids do.”

In court, Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian refused to admit that the absence of soap, a toothbrush, a bed, and sleep constituted unsafe and unsanitary conditions, the legal standards applying to the detention of migrant children. The U.S. Border Patrol chief for the El Paso region callously remarked, “Twenty years ago, we were lucky if we had juice and crackers for those in custody. Now, our stations are looking more like Walmarts, with diapers and baby formula and all kinds of things, like food and snacks.” Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the refusal to acknowledge reality recently by calling the two camps he visited, neither solely for children, but one housing families, examples of “compassionate care… care that every American would be proud of.”

Really? In whose world are filth, disease, and persistent emotional cruelty acceptable? In what America is the brutal incarceration of children not a violation of founding principles? In what America is rejecting the advances in protections that have been a hallmark of U.S. and international policy since the Second World War standard operating procedure? Since when do American officials just throw up their hands and declare defeat (as a kind of victory of cruelty) rather than muster their best talents, energies, and resources to confront such a problem? The answer, of course, is in Donald Trump’s America. And don’t for a moment think that this is just a matter of the piling up of unintended consequences. It’s not.

A Declaration of Inhuman Rights

Recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered some insights into the mindset of such an administration when it comes to the country’s longstanding embrace of the very idea of human rights. Soon after July 4th, he announced the creation of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department. Its purpose, he claimed, was to rethink the spread of human rights protections as a part of American foreign policy. The very idea of rights, Pompeo insisted, had spun out of control. “Human-rights advocacy has lost its bearings and become more of an industry than a moral compass,” he said, wagging his finger at 70 years of history. “‘Rights talk’ has become a constant element of our domestic political discourse, without any serious effort to distinguish what rights mean and where they come from.”

Rather than expand rights further, he explained, the country would do well to return to (his idea of) the context of the founding fathers and explore just what they really meant in their classic writings. Essential to his goal, experts suggested, was rolling back abortion rights. A remarkable number of the commission members were, in fact, known for their anti-abortion positions and this should have surprised no one, since the State Department had already withdrawn all health assistance from international organizations that offer abortion counseling and care. In doing so, it expanded what, in prior Republican administrations, were more modest restrictions on abortion-related care. Striking as such a global anti-abortion-rights position might be, however, Pompeo’s urge seems far grander. His goal is evidently to unilaterally reject the evolution of human rights that has prominently defined the country since the post-World War Two era, and that has been an essential piece of American democratic rhetoric since its founding.

To begin the process, Pompeo promptly misappropriated the very language of the Declaration of Independence to promote an agenda explicitly calling for the removal of rights. “My hope,” he announced, “is that the Commission on Unalienable Rights will ground our understanding of human rights in a manner that will both inform and better protect essential freedoms — and underscore how central these ideas are not only to Americans, but to all of humanity.” As the rest of his comments showed, he was invoking the freedom to deprive others, exclude others, and cause hardship for others. Placed alongside the border realities, it was a testament to the administration’s determination to erase rights from the nation’s identity. Putting a fine point on his goals, Pompeo added that, in his view, human rights and democracy were distinctly in opposition to each other. As he pungently put it, “Loose talk of ‘rights’ unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.”

Pompeo’s attempt to recast the founders’ intent in the context of today’s cruelty may be the most full-throated articulation to date of what this administration has been up to. The ongoing mistreatment of children at the border, a story that has lasted for well over a year, suggests that the spirit of Pompeo’s Declaration of Inhuman Rights has long been on the agenda. He had one thing right, however: those border camps do seem to belong to another place and time, one that preceded the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, another document he invoked, intending to reshape American adherence to it.

The New Status Quo

This is hardly the first time the Trump administration has revealed its cynicism over democracy. Redefining the very purpose of “liberal democracy,” as I wrote more than a year ago, had been part of its mission since the beginning. In its first 18 months, the administration removed the language of democracy from the mission statements of many of its departments, including the phrase “nation of immigrants” from that of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Still, after two and a half years of reorienting the executive branch of government away from equal protection under the law, the equal right to vote, and a respect for the very idea of welcoming immigrants, Pompeo’s “commission” may be the most brazen conceptual act yet when it comes to erasing the language of human rights from the country’s identity.

It’s in this still-developing context that the migrant children crisis should be understood. It should be seen as a graphic version of the insistence of this administration on changing the very meaning of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the modern age. For Pompeo (as for his president), the evolution of the country towards more rights for more people is nothing but a mark of shame. How far back would he take us? To before the Civil War?

No wonder, on learning each day’s news from the border, it’s easy to feel we’ve entered a dismal fairy tale from an age of ogres and witches, where the forces of evil and ill will have taken charge and the prospect of saving helpless children seems as irretrievably long gone as those crumbs eaten by the birds following Hansel and Gretel on their grim journey into the witch’s lair. Attacking the most vulnerable among us — infants, toddlers, young children, teens — leaves little room for doubt. This administration is determined to undo the country’s commitment to human rights and so change its identity in a way that should concern us all.

Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBTQ Religious Right organization Family Research Council, was invited to speak at an event hosted by the State Department this week,where he has been rubbing elbows with some of the Trump administration’s top brass, who have been dropping by his radio studio for exclusive interviews on his show, Washington Watch.

The State Department is hosting a three-day Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, where a bipartisan lineup of high-ranking officials is discussing threats to religious liberty across the world. Perkins spoke at the event yesterday, and broadcast his weekday radio program from the State Department.

In addition to his role at Family Research Council, Perkins chairs the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, to which he was appointed on the recommendation of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell despite the fact that Perkins’ group was identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its attacks against the LGBTQ community and brings with it a well-documented track record of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was a guest on Perkins’ show, there to hype the State Department’s event to Perkins’ Religious Right audience. The following day, Mark Green, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), joined Perkins on his radio show to talk about the importance of USAID pairing with religious groups to fulfill their missions abroad.

“For us at USAID, around the world, we are far more effective when we partner with the community of faith,” Green said. “The community of faith, faith-based organizations, help us to reach corners that we could not reach in this world through the government.”

Perkins agreed, praising the Trump administration for its work with religious groups, adding, “Together we can do so much more than if we try to do it alone.” At the end of the interview, Green told Perkins, who has a troubled history regarding racism: “I’m honored to be with you.”

That affirming message is in stark contrast to the elements of Perkins’ public record that raised concerns about his appointment to the USCIRF. As Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery noted after Perkins’ election to USCIRF chair in June:

As recently as 2015, Perkins claimed that Islam “is incompatible with the Constitution.” That same year, he defended calls to restrict the immigration of Muslims by declaring that “only 16 percent of Islam is a religion.” The year before, he suggested that Christians who support legal equality for LGBTQ people don’t have the same legal protections as more conservative Christians, because a “true religious freedom” has to be “based on orthodox religious viewpoints.”

It’s also worth noting that the Family Research Council is one of the Religious Right groups that have eagerly worked with the most religiously oppressive regimes—those classified by the USCIRF as among the worst for religious liberty—in order to resist international recognition for the rights of LGBTQ people and to defend governments’ right to enforce “traditional” religious views on gender, sexuality, and family.

Scholars have argued that religious intolerance at home undermines the United States’ ability to advocate for human rights overseas.

Tags: Mark Green Mike Pompeo Tony Perkins Anti-LGBT Religious Right Family Research Council U.S. State Department USAID

omg

While Hagee’s influence and the influence of his organization CUFI are stronger than ever with Trump in the White House, his political clout with the Trump administration is, at least partially, due to the presence of staunch Christian Zionists in two of the top offices in the executive branch: vice president and secretary of state.

Pence and Pompeo push “holy war”

Though several Trump officials spoke at the recent CUFI summit, two stand out — not just for their high-ranking positions but also for their open admissions that their Christian Zionist beliefs guide their policies. These officials are Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

After Trump chose his running mate, Pence’s religious fervor came under media scrutiny, with several outlets noting that he was known to be an ardent Christian Zionist. Pence’s faith gained particular attention owing to his past statements on Israel, which he has often described in prophetic terms.

Though raised Catholic, Pence gradually transitioned to an “evangelical Catholic” and then to an evangelical Protestant and has since become a key political figure representing the fundamentalist Christian movement that promotes “dominionism,” an ideology that varies in its interpretations but ultimately seeks to see the secular nature of theU.S. government shift towards one governed by “Biblical law.” Pence’s association with this movement has led prominent voices in the media to accuse him of supporting a theocratic form of government.

Though many of the initial concerns about Pence revolved around his likely effects on domestic policy, much of his influence has instead been seen in foreign policy, including the administration’sMiddle East policy. His public identification as a Christian Zionist and his speech to the 2017 CUFI summit, the first vice president to ever speak at the annual event, have led some to worry that the Christian Zionist view of prophecy is guiding Pence’s political actions.

[ pix Pence visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site in Jerusalem’s Old City, Jan. 23, 2018. Oded Balilty | AP

Following Pence’s first speech at CUFI, Daniel Hummel, a scholar and fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told the Washington Post:

Christian Zionism has a long history in American politics, but it has never captured the bully pulpit of the White House. Past administrations often used general biblical language in reference to Israel, but never has the evangelical theology of Christian Zionism been so close to the policymaking apparatus of the executive branch.

By identifying with Christian Zionism while in office, Pence risks the Trump administration’s ongoing search for an ‘ultimate deal’ to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and erodes the U.S.’ claim that it can be an ‘honest broker’ in the Middle East.”

Concerns that the U.S. is under the influence of extremist religious Zionism and Christian Zionism that would prevent the country from acting as an “honest broker” in the Israel-Palestine conflict have, unsurprisingly, been proven true. In fact, Pence’s religious beliefs are believed to have been a major factor in Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. Embassy to the contested city.

Though Mike Pence is the highest-ranking member of the Trump administration who is openly a Christian Zionist, it is Pompeo that is the most overt and open about how his religious beliefs regarding the end times guide his decision-making as head of the U.S. State Department.

For much of his political career, Pompeo has framed U.S. counterterrorism policy as a “holy war” between Christianity and Islam, which he believes is the earthly equivalent of acosmic battle between good and evil. In 2017, as CIA director, Pompeo claimed:

Radical Islamic terror [will] continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior [and] truly the only solution for our world.”

That same year, Pompeocreated a new CIA “mission center” targeting Iran headed by Michael D’Andrea, whose CIA nickname is “The Prince of Darkness.” Pompeo, like many Christian Zionists, believes that war between the United States and Iran is part of the end times, a belief that is outright alarming given his prior control over CIA covert operations and his focus on Iran, as well as his current role as the U.S.’ chief diplomat, in which he has also been laser-focused on promoting an aggressive policy towards Iran.

In addition to his views on “holy war,” Pompeo also frequently discussed his views on the rapture while serving as CIA director. *TYT* reported last year that Pompeo had spoken about the rapture so frequently that it had reportedly frightened top CIA officials.

According to Michael Weinstein — founder of theMilitary Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group on issues of religious freedom in the military and intelligence community — who was quoted in the TYTreport:

He [Pompeo] is intolerant of anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist Christian. The people that worked under him at the CIA that came to us were never confused — they never had time to be confused. They were shocked and then they were scared shitless.”

A 2015 video of Pompeo that surfaced while he was CIA director also shows the former congressman describing politics as “a never-ending struggle … until the rapture.”

More recently, a New York Times article published in March again brought Pompeo’s obsession with the end times back into public view. Titled “The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy,” the article detailed how Pompeo has made it standard operating procedure to mix his Christian Zionist views with his approach to foreign policy. That article also referenced the statement Pompeo made earlier this year, in which he opined that it was “certainly possible” that President Trump had been sent by God to “save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace.”

Pompeo made those statements during an official trip to Jerusalem that was also controversial for other reasons. Indeed, in a state department video shared on social media and meant to publicize Pompeo’s trip, footage of a model of the Third Jewish Temple was included while footage of the Al Aqsa mosque was notably excluded, despite it being the most iconic building in Jerusalem.

[ vid]

Given that Pompeo had also visited the tunnels that have worn away the historic mosque’s foundations, many Palestinians took the video as a sign that the Trump administration was colluding with the Temple Activist movement in Israel, which was discussed in detail in Part II of this series.

Joining forces to target Jerusalem

Well before Theodore Herzl founded political Zionism and published The Jewish State, Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in service of a religious obsession with ushering in the end times. The historical record clearly shows how Christian Zionists have influenced events throughout history, particularly in regard to the founding of the state of Israel and subsequent developments in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In the pursuit of these dispensationalist end-times prophecies, Christian Zionists have forged alliances with Jewish Zionists and each has opportunistically used the other in order to usher in the common events that are believed to facilitate the coming of their respective apocalypses or to aid more secular, political goals. From Hechler and Herzl, to Scofield and Untermeyer, to Begin and Falwell, these alliances have shaped the policy of Western governments, particularly the U.S. and England, for over a century.

Today, only one such prophecy has yet to be fulfilled, the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, which is currently occupied by the Al Aqsa mosque compound. Now, more than ever before, Israel’s government, as shown in Part II, is filled with high-ranking officials who openly call for Al Aqsa’s destruction and seek to hastily construct a Third Temple. Similarly, as this report has shown, the Trump administration is greatly influenced by Christian Zionists who also seek the mosque’s destruction, in hopes that the Third Temple will soon be built.

Yet, the Trump administration’s ties to this apocalyptic ideology go even deeper than has been discussed in this article,as many other influential members in the Trump administration — especially top Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman — also share and actively promote this extremist religious Zionist ideology that seeks to rebuild a Third Temple. As will be seen in the next installment of this series, this ideology is also a driving factor for top Trump and Republican Party donors such as Sheldon Adelson.

The end result is that the hold of this apocalyptic ideology on both the governments of Israel and the United States appears to be stronger now than ever, meaning that the danger currently facing Al Aqsa mosque, and with it world peace, looms large.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/trump-supporters-are-calling-for-pompeos-ouster-after-he-pushed-president-into-a-corner-on-iran-report/

POMPEO playing gulf of tonkin card hard

no lnx many pix

If there were any lingering hopes that the corporate media learned from its role in perpetuating the lies that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and would never again help start a Middle East war on the basis of false or flimsy evidence, the headlines that blared across the front pages of major U.S. news websites Thursday night indicated that such hopes were badly misplaced.

The U.S. military late Thursday released blurry, black-and-white video footage that it claimed—without any underlying analysis or further details—showed an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, one of the oil tankers damaged in attacks in the Gulf of Oman.

Here’s how CNN presented the U.S. military’s video:

Iran has denied any involvement in the attacks, and Yutaka Katada—the owner of the Kokuka Courageous—contradicted the Trump administration’s account during a press conference on Friday.

“Our crew said that the ship was attacked by a flying object,” Katada said. “I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship.”

Independent critics were quick to call for extreme skepticism in the face of U.S. government claims, given the quality of the “evidence” and the warmongering track records of those presenting it.

Trita Parsi

@tparsi

A serial liar is President.

A warmonger and a serial fabricator who helped get us into the disastrous Iraq war and who has sabotaged numerous attempts at diplomacy is the NatSec Advisor.

But go ahead, Media, treat Pompeo's accusations as "evidence"...#OilTanker #GulfOfOman

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12:33 PM - Jun 13, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

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But the media displayed no such caution.

Just taking a random sample of screenshots after the news broke Thursday night, major outlets largely did the Pentagon’s dirty work by posting uncritical headlines that took the claims at face value.

The Washington Post used the word “purported” in its headline, but erroneously reported that the video was taken “before” the explosion on the vessel, not after. The headline was later changed, but was made no more critical of the military’s claim:...

Iran's Isna news agency published an unverified image of what it said was a burning tanker in the Gulf of Oman

US footage shows 'Iran removing unexploded mine'

Iran has strongly denied the US allegation that it was behind attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday.

bbc.com

107 people are talking about this

In a blog post on Friday, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote that the Trump administration’s narrative that Iranians were removing an unexploded mine from the damaged oil tanker “doesn’t make any sense at all” and said the video footage released by the U.S. “needs to be carefully analyzed” before any conclusions are drawn.

“[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo alleged that only the Iranians had the expertise to deploy these mines,” Cole wrote. “We heard this crock for 8.5 years in Iraq—all shaped charges had to be Iran-backed, even those of al-Qaeda, because Iraqis didn’t have the expertise…. Sure. Had to be Iran, helping those hyper-Sunni al-Qaeda. Very likely story.”

On Twitter, Sina Toossi, research associate at the National Iranian American Council, echoed Cole’s call for skepticism and an investigation.

“What we need is an impartial investigation,” Toossi wrote, “and to be highly skeptical of claims and intel assessments from Bolton/Pompeo.”

Sina Toossi

all in on venez coup

many many lnx

The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has linked Christian beliefs with foreign policy, raising questions about the extent to which his evangelism is influencing American diplomacy.

By Edward Wong

March 30, 2019

JERUSALEM — When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sat down for an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in a hotel in Jerusalem earlier this month, he made a remark that was perhaps the most revelatory of any in his nearly one year in office.

An evangelical Christian, Mr. Pompeo had just returned from tours of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the ground where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried, and of tunnels beneath the Western Wall, by the holiest site in Judaism. The interviewer posed a question around a biblical tale about a queen who saved Jews from slaughter by a Persian official: Did Mr. Pompeo think President Trump had been “raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?”

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It was remarkable — so we were down in the tunnels where we could see 3,000 years ago, and 2,000 years ago, if I have the history just right — to see the remarkable history of the faith in this place, and the work that our administration’s done, to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains. I am confident that the Lord is at work here.”

White evangelical Christians are a powerful force in the Republican Party. Vice President Mike Pence is a staunch believer and former President George W. Bush is an adherent, too.

But no secretary of state in recent decades has been as open and fervent as Mr. Pompeo about discussing Christianity and foreign policy in the same breath. That has increasingly raised questions about the extent to which evangelical beliefs are influencing American diplomacy.

On Monday, in a speech at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group, Mr. Pompeo told an anecdote about Tibor Baranski, a Christian who saved 3,000 Jews in Hungary during World War II. Then he said, “As secretary of state and as a Christian, I’m proud to lead American diplomacy to support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

The next day, Mr. Pompeo announced an expansion of Trump administration anti-abortion policies, saying the United States would stop funding foreign organizations that support other groups that perform abortions. It is a policy popular with conservatives, Catholics and evangelical Christians.

Though Mr. Trump is secular, white evangelicals are a big part of his voter base, and some of his major foreign policy moves, planned or supported by Mr. Pompeo, are intended to shore up political support.

[ Image

“I am confident that the Lord is at work here,” Mr. Pompeo told a reporter in Jerusalem who asked whether President Trump was sent to protect Israel from Iran.CreditJim Young/Reuters]

The most notable examples involve Israel. When Mr. Trump moved the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, evangelicals applauded.

“Be part of it,” he said at the meeting, at the Summit church in Wichita, Kan. “Be in the fight.”

In November, Mr. Pompeo told a reporter for The New York Times Magazine that the Bible “informs everything I do.” The reporter noticed an open Bible in his office, with a Swiss Army knife marking his place at the end of the book of Queen Esther.

Mr. Pompeo, 55, became a devoted Christian at West Point, where he joined a Bible study group. After moving to Kansas, he joined the Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a relatively conservative denomination.

The State Department did not respond to questions about the intersection of Mr. Pompeo’s Christian beliefs and policy.

American evangelicals who supported Mr. Trump’s embassy move might also approve if Israel annexes part or all of the West Bank. After Mr. Trump formally recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, many conservative Israelis said they are hopeful that annexing part of the West Bank will be next.

Then there is the question of what an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, as drawn up by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, will recommend for the disputed territories of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

[Image

Evangelical Christians supported Mr. Trump’s order to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.CreditMenahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]

Martin Indyk, a former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, noted the evangelical influence on the Trump administration in saying he doubted that the peace plan would propose ceding any Israeli-occupied territory in the West Bank to Palestinians. Nor was it likely to provide a route to Palestinian sovereignty, Mr. Indyk said.

“In the view of evangelicals, that is the land that God gave to the Jews,” he said. “They’re strongly opposed to any territorial concession there. If there is any of that in the plan, I think there will be strong evangelical opposition to it.”

Mr. Trump’s decision in December 2017 to move the American Embassy was intended to please evangelical voters in the United States, as well as some Jews. Mr. Netanyahu has embraced evangelical support for his right-wing policies, and sees evangelicals as more reliable American allies of Israel than liberal American Jews.

An evangelical pastor, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, gave an opening prayer at the embassy building’s dedication ceremony in May. His presence made many Israelis uncomfortable; he has said Jews, Muslims and Mormons are bound for hell. In 2017, during a conference call of Mr. Trump’s top evangelical supporters, Mr. Jeffress led a prayer for the protection of Mr. Pompeo, then C.I.A. director, and thanked God for putting him in the job.

Mr. Pompeo has gotten rid of a diplomatic consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians and merged its work into the new embassy.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Mr. Pompeo also has broadcast his Christian beliefs. At the start of a January speech in Cairo, Mr. Pompeo said the trip was “especially meaningful” for him “as an evangelical Christian, coming so soon after the Coptic Church’s Christmas celebrations.”

He added, “In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth.”

Observers found it remarkable that Mr. Pompeo would open a speech in a majority-Muslim country by highlighting his Christianity. And some critics have pointed out that Mr. Pompeo, before becoming secretary, made us-versus-them statements about Christians and Muslims while talking about terrorism and war.

[Image

Mr. Pompeo broadcast his beliefs in Cairo, where he said his trip to Egypt, a Muslim-majority country, was “especially meaningful” for him “as an evangelical Christian.”CreditPool photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds]

At Mr. Pompeo’s confirmation hearing in April 2018, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, asked him about his ties to prominent anti-Islam activists. Mr. Pompeo acknowledged the ties but said he had a strong record “with respect to tolerance and the equal treatment of people.”

When Mr. Pompeo traveled to Lebanon after his recent stop in Israel, he toured a church and a Crusader citadel and talked with a bishop about religious freedom, one of his favorite themes. He plans to host a second conference on religious freedom at the State Department in July.

Mr. Pompeo has made Iran a signature issue, blaming it for stirring unrest in the Middle East. He reliably calls the country by its full name — the Islamic Republic of Iran — to highlight its religious identity.

Last year, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Pence led an extraordinary campaign to pressure President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a proponent of political Islam, to release an American evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in 2016.

But Mr. Pompeo, citing the mission of religious freedom, has also defended the rights of Muslims oppressed by some Asian nations.

He has criticized Myanmar for its ethnic cleansing of Rohingya, though he has declined to describe it as genocide. And Mr. Pompeo has denounced China for its detentions of one million or more Muslims.

Hours before leaving for Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon, Mr. Pompeo hosted an on-the-record conference call with just “faith-based media,” barring journalists who regularly cover the State Department.

Though widely criticized for the move, Mr. Pompeo and the State Department have refused to say who was on the call or release a transcript.

Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, told Mr. Pompeo during a House hearing on Wednesday that his action “raises concerns about First Amendment violations.”

Mr. Pompeo said it was “no different” than giving selective interviews. He added, “I am confident I will do so again.”

Elizabeth Dias contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: The Rapture and the Real World: Pompeo Mixes Beliefs and Policy.

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https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/12/17230078/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state-confirmation-cory-booker

Cory Booker just excoriated Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, during his confirmation hearing over Pompeo’s past associations with prominent anti-Muslim ideologues.

For most of his hearing on Thursday morning, Pompeo (who’s currently the CIA director) seemed prepared and capable of handling every question the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw at him. But the nominee stumbled — badly — under a cleverly prepared series of questions from the New Jersey Democrat.

First, Booker asked Pompeo about a 2013 speech in which Pompeo blasted American Islamic leaders for their “silence” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and said that made them “potentially complicit” in terrorism. (American Muslim leaders in fact spoke out forcefully against terrorism and extremism in the wake of the attacks and organized effortsto help victims.)

Pompeo responded by saying that he wasn’t trying to cast aspersions on all Muslims but was simply pointing out that Muslims have more ability to discourage other Muslims from joining militant groups. “For certain forms of violence, there are certain people who are better positioned” to act, he said.

Pompeo added, “Each and every human, not just Americans, each human being has an obligation to push back against this extremist use of violence.”

This seemed like a decent evasion at first — but it soon became clear that Pompeo had walked into a dangerous trap.

Booker said he agreed with Pompeo that “silence in the face of injustice lends strength to that injustice.” Then he sprang the trap: He brought up Pompeo’s long history of association with two of America’s most prominent Islamophobes, Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, and asked whether Pompeo had ever used his “position” to denounce their extremist views.

Gaffney, a conspiracy theorist who has accused most American Muslim civic organizations of being fronts for Islamist groups, had hosted Pompeo on his radio show. Gabriel, an anti-Islam activist who has described Islam as “a political movement cloaked in religion,” hosted a dinner in Pompeo’s honor in 2016 — where she gave him an award that he accepted. Did Pompeo ever condemn them in the way he expects all Muslims to condemn terrorists?

Pompeo had no good answer: “Senator, I couldn’t tell you,” he responded. “I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.”

Here’s the exchange a transcript, if you prefer reading:

BOOKER: I’m wondering, Sir — do you know Frank Gaffney?

POMPEO: Yes, I do.

BOOKER: And you’ve been on his show dozens of times?

POMPEO: I was on his show some, yes.

BOOKER: I have here over 20 times. And he has talked about [how] Muslims who abide by the adherence of the faith should be considered to be tried for acts of sedition and prosecuted. I have a lot of his statements. Did you remain silent — and, from my notes at least, you’re a friend of his — were you silent in your position of authority in these words that devalue the American constitution?

POMPEO: Sir, my record on this is unambiguous ...

BOOKER: If that’s your response, you did not say anything to call out his remarks. What about Brigitte Gabriel. Do you know her?

POMPEO: I do.

BOOKER: Someone who runs an organization that has been considered a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were you silent? Did you ever call her out on her remarks that are hateful or bigoted?

POMPEO: Senator, I’ve spoken to a number of groups, and I believe my record with respect to tolerance and the equal treatment of people, I think it ...

BOOKER: But, yes or no, did you ever call her out?

POMPEO: Senator, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.

BOOKER: Okay, well, I believe this special obligation that you talk about for Americans to condemn things that for attacking our Constitution or ideals would obligate you under your own definition to speak out.

Mike Pompeo isn’t the only person in the White House with ties to these kinds of groups in the Trump administration. Both National Security Adviser John Bolton and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have a long record of association with Gaffney in particular. Trump cited a “study” on Muslim public opinion conducted Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, as a justification for his Muslim ban.

But this is the most aggressively, to my recollection, that any Trump administration official has ever been questioned about their association with Islamophobic individuals or groups. And it’s incredibly telling that Pompeo, who’s typically clever and quick on his feet, had no real answer for Booker’s very simple questions.

ref nyt

D.C. – During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on the nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) questioned Pompeo about his past statements targeting Muslim and LGBTQ Americans.

:{A video of the exchange is available}:{, high quality audio can be downloaded}::{ }::{here}::{, and a rush transcript is below:}:

Cory Booker (CB): I want to pick up on one of the themes we talked at length about and that involves many of your past statements concerning Muslim Americans.

CB: Perhaps I just want to start with some of your language – in a speech you talked about folks who “worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.” You mourned that we live in a country where that happens. Do you have any views of the Muslim faith or people who believe in worshipping quote-unquote other gods, is that something negative in our country?

Mike Pompeo (MP): No senator, you can look at my record, you don’t have to take my word for it here today –my record is exquisite with respect to treating people of each and every faith with the dignity they deserve to protect the right to practice their religion or no religion for that matter in the way that they want to. [Crosstalk] I’ve heard these critiques – I’ve worked closely with Muslim leaders, with Muslim countries…the CIA has saved countless, thousands of Muslim lives during my 15 months… this is at the core of who I am Senator Booker. I promise you I will treat persons of each faith or no faith with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

CB: Your words right now are really encouraging, words do matter, it’s not just actions. In a nation where you see too much bigotry you and I both know words matter. So I do understand your actions and I will stipulate to the actions you just said. But I want to get to the bottom of people who are going to be reading your past statements and give you a chance to further explain them.

CB: I woudl like to go back to what we talked about you and I – this idea that “a special obligation falls on Muslims” in regards to terrorist attacks in our country and you said something very dramatic. And I know you know this. You said that people who are silent are complicit in those terrorist attacks. Do you think that Muslim Americans in this country – who serve in the military, who serve in the State Department – their failure to speak up, are they complicit in terrorist attacks?

MP: Senator each and every human, not just Americans, has an obligation to push back against this extremist use of violence, from whatever faith.

CB: So you don’t create a special class of people in this country based upon their religion that have a special obligation as you said to condemn terrorist attacks?

MP: No senator, having said that, and you and I had a chance to discuss this yesterday and I’m not sure we ended up completely agreeing, but perhaps we did, I also do believe this firmly: that for certain places for certain forms of violence there are certain [people] who are better positioned, folks who are more credible, more trustworthy have a more shared experience. So when it comes to making sure we don’t have terrorists brewing in places where Muslims congregate, there’s a special place, right? They have a, it’s more than than a duty it’s an opportunity, to be treated as, when someone of another faith says it...

CB: So if I can go on because I have some more questions… So you think that Muslims in America who are in positions of leadership have a different category of obligation because of their religion, that’s what I’m hearing you saying.

MP: It’s not an obligation it’s an opportunity, senator.

CB: It’s interesting because I would agree with you, that silence in the face of injustice – we’ve seen this in the Holocaust, we’ve seen this in the Civil Rights Movement – I do agree with you silence in the face of injustice lends strength to that injustice. I do have a problem though when you start creating, dicing up American people and saying certain Americans – I don’t care if its Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Muslims that serve on my staff, that they’re in positions of leadership, that suddenly have a special obligation. I do believe, though, all of us when it comes to violent actions or words have an obligation. So I’m wondering, sir, do you know Frank Gafney?

MP: Yes I do.

CB: And you’ve been on his show dozens of times.

MP: I was on his show some, yes Senator.

CB: I have here over 20 times. And he’s talked about Muslims who abide by the adherence of their faith should be tried for acts of sedition and should be prosecuted. Did you remain silent when you were on his show? Did you ever question? Because I have a lot of his statements here. Did you remain silent, and from my notes at least he’s a friend of yours, were you silent in your position of authority against these words that are violative of the American Constitution? Were you silent with him?

MP: My record is unambiguous.

CB: If that’s your response, you did not say anything to call out his remarks. What about Bridget Gabriel, do you know her?

MP: I do.

CB: Someone who has been, who runs an organization that has been considered a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were you silent? Did you ever call her out on her remarks are that are hateful and bigoted?

MP: Senator I’ve spoken to a number of grounds, and I believe my record with respect to tolerance and the equal treatment of people is –

CB: Yes or no, did you ever call her out?

MP: Senator I couldn’t tell you, I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.

CB: OK, well I believe the special obligation that you talk about for Americans to condemn things that are attacking their Constitution or ideals would obligate you in your own definition to speak out.

MP: Senator, if I might, I have called out… we had a terrible fellow in Kansas called Fred Phelps, and I called him out…

CB: Sir, I have a minute left, because I do want to give you a chance to speak about your comments about gays and lesbians. You said in a speech, that, mourning an America that “endorses a perversion and calls it an alternative lifestyle” – those are your words. Is being gay a perversion?

MP: Senator, when I was a politician I had a very clear view on whether it was appropriate for two same sex persons to marry. I stand by that.

CB: So you don’t think it’s appropriate for two gay people to marry?

MP: Senator I continue to hold that view, it’s the same view for the record…

CB: And so people in the State Department that are married under your leadership – you don’t believe that that should be allowed?

MP: We have, I believe it’s the case that we have married gay couples at the CIA. I treated them with the exact same set of rights –

CB: Do you believe gay sex is a perversion? Yes or no? [Crosstalk] Because that’s what you said here in one of your speeches.

MP: Senator I’m going to give you the same answer here that I gave you previously. My respect for every individual regardless of their sexual orientation is the same, and it will continue to be so if I am confirmed.

CB: So I will conclude by saying, you’re going to be Secretary of State of the United States at a time when we have increase in hate speech and hate actions against Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, Indian Americans – hate acts are on the increase in our nation. You’re going to representing this country and its values abroad in nations where gay individuals are under untold persecution, untold violence. Your views do matter, you’re going to be dealing with Muslim states and on Muslim issues and I do not necessarily concur that you are putting forward the values of our nation when you believe that there are people in this country who are perverse and where you think that you create different categories of Americans and their obligations when it comes to condemning violence. So I’ll have another round but thank you.

omg

Pompeo actually just cheered the ‘new opportunities’ presented by the Arctic’s melting ice sheets

by Cody Fenwick May 6, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has never been terribly worried about climate change, but in a new speech to the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland on Monday, he seemed…

verge on dominionism?

few months ago, Katherine Stewart—whose reporting focuses on the intersection of politics and religion—wrote something pretty jarring about the white evangelicals who dominate Trump’s base.

As the Trump presidency falls under siege on multiple fronts, it has become increasingly clear that the so-called values voters will be among the last to leave the citadel. A lot of attention has been paid to the supposed paradox of evangelicals backing such an imperfect man, but the real problem is that our idea of Christian nationalism hasn’t caught up with the reality. We still buy the line that the hard core of the Christian right is just an interest group working to protect its values. But what we don’t get is that Mr. Trump’s supposedly anti-Christian attributes and anti-democratic attributes are a vital part of his attraction.

Today’s Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America’s founders, but at bottom they sound as if they prefer autocrats to democrats. In fact, what they really want is a king.

Stewart wrote that in the context of noting that some white evangelicals have compared Donald Trump to King Cyrus, who ruled the Persian empire in the 6th century BC.

Isaiah 45 celebrates Cyrus for freeing a population of Jews who were held captive in Babylon. Cyrus is the model for a nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful.

Now we learn that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is comparing Trump to another biblical figure.

In an interview in Jerusalem, the Christian Broadcast Network’s Chris Mitchell asked Pompeo, “could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?” Esther is the main heroine of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which was celebrated this week.

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo added that he is “confident that the Lord is at work here” when he sees the “remarkable history of the faith in this place and the work that our administration’s done to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains.”

According to the Book of Esther in the Old Testament, she became queen of the Persian Empire during the 5th century BC and saved the Jews from being exterminated. Notice that, for the reporter from the Christian Broadcast Network, Esther saved the Jewish people from the “Iranian menace.” That is exactly how Christian nationalists like Pompeo are framing the threat today: Donald Trump is defending Israel against the current-day Iranian menace.

All of this is cultish and disturbing on many levels—not the least of which is the fact that our foreign policy is being managed by a man who thinks he’s playing out some kind of biblical prophecy. But the most dangerous part is that cults are inherently authoritarian, which takes me back to what Stewart wrote.

I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past two years. And while I have heard plenty of comments casting doubt on the more questionable aspects of Mr. Trump’s character, the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord. I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.

The fact that Christian nationalists have anointed the most amoral man to ever occupy the White House as their savior tells us that their allegiance to him isn’t grounded in principle, but in authoritarian power that puts them above the law. That’s the kind of political leadership they’ve been looking for.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/mike-pompeo-lashes-out-at-the-international-criminal-court-to-shield-the-us-from-war-crimes-prosecutions/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/mike-pompeo-just-blatantly-lied-to-jake-tapper-here-are-5-follow-up-questions-the-cnn-host-should-have-asked/

n korea

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/pence-and-the-apocalypse-the-vp-and-mike-pompeo-juggle-work-and-doomsday-rituals/

Trump’s vice president and secretary of state appear to have a conflict between their private religious beliefs and their public duties, according to a financial journalist.

Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties.

“Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.”

Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.”

“Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.”

The Pay

The so-called “Ratepayer Fairness Act of 2017” (H.R. 1572) would require state public utility commissions to determine whether the setting of electricity rates for technologies deployed by individual customers, such as solar energy or energy storage, results in subsidies to those customers from customers who do not deploy those technologies.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) sponsored H.R. 1572 and received $15,000 from Koch Industries in the 2017-2018 election cycle to his campaign and First in Freedom PAC. The only U.S. House member to co-sponsor it isRep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who has also received a combined $15,000 from KochPAC into his congressional re-election committee and his leadership PAC.

The Play

H.R. 1572 seeks to limit utility commissions from designing electricity rates favorable to solar or renewable energy if that technology causes customers or classes of customers to subsidize other customers or customer classes.

The bill would force utility commissions to hold hearings to consider whether setting electricity rates for a technology disproportionately affects some customers or customer classes, even if all customers gain in the long run (for example in reducing the need for new electricity generating plants).

If a commission finds that such subsidies or disproportionate effects exist, the bill then requires it to determine whether those subsidies are “appropriate,” as defined under current law. If the legislature or utility commission took a narrow view of “appropriate,” that policy could be used to stifle solar and other renewables.

Legislatures and public utility commissions do wander away from “true” cost allocations to pursue other values like “just and reasonable rates” for residential customers.

Some public utility commissions can currently consider the environmental cost of changes in rates among classes, and many renewable advocates argue that the social costs of carbon — such as aridization, or pollution and its public health effects — should also be considered, as it is in the European Union.

Although the Trump Administration has retreated from assigning a social cost to carbon in its decision-making, state utility commissions are taking up the practice.

H.R. 1572 is consistent with the Administration’s attempt to slow the use of storage facilities by solar energy and other renewable energy sources.

The Players

The bill was originally introduced into the U.S. House in the last congressional session by then-U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, now the Secretary of State. Koch Industries was Pompeo’s top contributor in every election between 2010 and 2016.

Jane Mayer noted in her book, Dark Money:

After his election, Pompeo turned to the company for his chief of staff, choosing Mark Chenoweth, a lawyer who had worked for Koch Industries’ lobbying team.Within weeks, Pompeo was championing two of Koch Industries’ legislative priorities — opposition to Obama’s plans to create a public EPA registry of greenhouse gas polluters and a digital database of consumer complaints about unsafe products.

Among other ties to the Kochs, The Washington Post notes that Pompeo started a business with private equity financing from the Kochs.

The only company other than Koch Industries lobbying for this bill is Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, and both have been large contributors to Republican congressional political organizations.

Companion legislation in the U.S. Senate (S. 613) was introduced by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), a climate change denier who took $166,000 from oil and gas companies, including Koch Industries, in his last election in 2012.

With Flake retiring from the Senate, no significant action is expected on this legislation this year, but the Kochs always have the money to push new policies.

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