Pompeo Admits That He Was On Trump-Zelensky Call For The First Time

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read JACQUELYN MARTIN/AFP/Getty Images)
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted Wednesday that he was on the infamous July 25 phone call with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time after assiduously dodging questions about it.

“I was on the phone call,” Pompeo said during a press conference in Rome. “The phone call was the in the context of, I guess I’d been Secretary of State for coming on a year and a half. I know precisely what the American policy is with respect to Ukraine. It’s been remarkably consistent and we will continue to try to drive those set of outcomes.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Pompeo had been dialed into the phone call on, throwing into stark relief how slippery Pompeo was in an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz on September 22.

When Raddatz asked Pompeo what he knew of Trump’s conversations with Zelensky, he dodged, saying that he hadn’t read reporting on the whistleblower complaint and made it seem like his only knowledge of the call came from a readout released by the Ukrainians. He pulled some impressive verbal contortions to distance himself as far as possible from the call.

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