Trump cabal is burning it all down

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned Monday morning from a European trip to a State Department workforce that is increasingly demoralized and resentful under his leadership, amid a growing belief that he has subordinated its mission and abandoned colleagues in the service of President Trump’s political aims.

  WaPo

Well, there's not a limited supply of whistles. They know what they can do.

The “prevailing mood is low and getting lower, if it can,” said Thomas R. Pickering, a diplomatic dean who served in high-ranking department positions and held seven ambassadorships, including to Russia and the United Nations, under six presidents of both parties.

[...]

Most worrisome to the department is concern that Pompeo did not intervene to protect U.S. diplomats either enlisted by Giuliani to assist his efforts [to pressure Ukraine] or punished for being insufficiently committed to the cause, according to more than a dozen current and former officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Trump, according to Giuliani, ordered that career diplomat Marie Yovanovitch be fired as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and she was removed from her post in May.

[...]

Yovanovitch and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, were accused by Giuliani and conservative media figures of trying to protect the Bidens from an investigation by Ukrainian prosectors and working at the behest of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist. The Open Society Foundation that Soros underwrites has been one of the funders of anti-corruption and transparency causes in Ukraine, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy.

[...]

In internal documents turned over to Congress by the State Department inspector general last week, Kent warned in an email to colleagues that Yovanovitch had become the target of a “classic disinformation operation.”

One of the conspiracy theories pushed by Giuliani and a columnist for The Hill was that Yovanovitch provided a “do not prosecute list” to Ukrainian officials to protect Biden and others. “One key sign of it being fake is that most of the names are misspelled in English — we would never spell most that way,” Kent said in one email to colleagues.

[...]

Kent’s concerns about the smear campaign were sent to the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, Philip Reeker, and later forwarded to the No. 3 official at the department, David Hale, and State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a close confidant of Pompeo.

On March 31, Reeker emailed Brechbuhl a breakdown of Kent’s concerns about the conspiracy theory against Yovanovitch, saying that “it’s a good summary of the story lines being peddled.” Yovanovitch is due to testify before investigating committees on Capitol Hill later this week. Brechbuhl and Kent, as well as Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, are also expected to provide depositions. An expected appearance by Kent on Monday was canceled.

[...]

“All of us felt like she was incredibly shabbily treated,” said a senior Western diplomat. “My understanding is that Pompeo was quite well briefed and took a passive role when the removal of Masha Yovanovitch happened. He couldn’t have been ignorant of the subject matter or the interests at play.”

[...]

Some officials insist Pompeo tried to shield Yovanovitch. As White House criticism of her rose in the spring, Pompeo “was trying to save her from what could have happened — the tweeting, and it could have gotten really bad,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

“So many in the building — in the bureaus — resent what is this targeting of a career person,” this official said. “But it’s so sad that no one can tell them all that was going on to prevent a much worse outcome: a humiliating public thrashing.”

[...]

Chris Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend, said, “I don’t think Mike Pompeo should be held responsible for Rudy’s activities.”

The secretary, one person familiar with events said, was frustrated with Giuliani’s actions and was not privy to many of his conversations with Trump. Pompeo listened in on the July call between Trump and Zelensky, this person said, because he was nervous about what Trump might say.

And should have been. And kept quiet about it.

State Department officials were buoyed by Pompeo when he arrived at the department 18 months ago promising to restore their “swagger” after the tenure of the doleful and isolated Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary. Now many agree with one anxious official who said that keeping up with the newest text messages and press accounts has become exhausting. “I just want the soap opera to end,” the official said.

Then get out your whistle.

Giuliani, who pressed the interests of Trump — “my client” — throughout the spring and summer in meetings and messages with diplomats and Ukrainian officials, offered a two-edged assessment of Pompeo in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, saying that the secretary knew everything but was a disappointment who did little.

[...]

After Giuliani said he provided the State Department with information about the perceived lack of loyalty by some department officials, he said, “I was told by the secretary they were going to investigate it internally. . . . I believed I had found someone who was going to look into this.” But Trump, he said, had to demand “three times” that Pompeo fire Yovanovitch. “The State Department was undercutting it,” Giuliani said. “They were protecting her.”

And how long do we think it will be before Trump is throwing Pompeo under the bus?

Rather than complicity in an attempted shakedown of Ukraine, according to [some], Pompeo and his diplomats were trying to facilitate a compromise that would satisfy the demands of the president and his attorney, while promoting a U.S.-Ukraine relationship that would meet the important foreign policy needs of both.

And did they really believe they could do that? They should have been pulling out the 25th amendment. They deserve no kudos.

The most comprehensively public statement of Pompeo’s views came on a European trip last week, when he spoke to journalists in Athens on Saturday. Everything the State Department had done regarding Ukraine, he said, was in the interests of the American people and “at the direction of the president.”

Interests of a handful of American people, most named Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.