During his Thursday confirmation hearing to be secretary of state, CIA Director Mike Pompeo refused to speak about a reported conversation he had with President Donald Trump and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats about the Russia investigation in March 2017.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) asked Pompeo about a Washington Post report on a briefing at the White House, after which Trump asked Coats and Pompeo to stay behind. Coats told associates that Trump complained about then-FBI Director James Comey’s work overseeing the Russia probe and asked if him if he could get Comey to back off the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, according to the Washington Post.
“I’m not going to talk about the conversations the President and I had,” Pompeo told Menendez on Thursday. “But I will tell you this: The article’s suggestion that he asked me to do anything that was improper is false.”
Pressed on whether Trump asked him anything related to the Russia probe, Pompeo said, “I don’t recall what he asked me that day precisely, but, I have to tell you, I’m with the president an awful lot. He’s never asked me to do anything that I considered remotely improper.”
Pompeo also confirmed that he has spoken to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, and investigators on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. But he wouldn’t offer details about what his testimony covered.
“He kept saying he really wished someone would take care of the problem for him, but that’s not asking.”
He’ll be asked this question during his Congressional Approval session…under oath. He better come up with a better answer than this one.
I thought it was going to be an interview with his Mother.
The limitation that it is anything Pompeo considers improper leaves a vast array of demands that Trump could make that would horrify the rest of us.
So he doesn’t remember and then offers an overall value judgment that everything Trump ever said was fine. One of those conversations where you realize there’s not much point in drawing it out.