House Democrats are keeping their impeachment inquiry going strong, sparked by the revelation of President Donald Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to cough up politically useful dirt on the Bidens. As part of their subsequent inquiry, House Democrats will apparently be hearing this week from a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. That former adviser — Michael McKinley — resigned just recently after more than three decades with the State Department.
As POLITICO’s Andrew Desiderio shared on Twitter:
‘NEWS: Former Pompeo adviser Michael McKinley, who resigned last week, will testify in closed session on Wednesday before House impeachment investigators, according to an official working on the inquiry.’
Pompeo described McKinley’s initial departure to reporters as the now former official simply seeking to move to the “next phase of his life.” Separately, however, he’s been reported to have “disapproved of what he saw as Pompeo’s insufficient public support for department officials implicated in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.”
Pompeo himself is among those implicated in Trump’s Ukraine scheme, having been listening into a highly scrutinized phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During that talk, Trump pushed for dirt to the point of saying Zelensky should get in touch with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr.
With McKinley set to testify to Congress this week, investigators’ schedule looks as maxed out as ever. After testimony on Monday from the Trump administration’s former top Russia adviser Fiona Hill, Congressional investigators will also be hearing this week from figures ranging from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent on Tuesday to McKinley on Wednesday and the high-profile Trump donor turned E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland on Thursday, among others.
House testimony expected this week—
Mon: Fiona Hill, ex Russia adviser
Tues: George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state
Wed: Michael McKinley, former top Pompeo aide
Thurs: Gordon Sondland
Fri: Laura Cooper, defense official overseeing Ukrainehttps://t.co/Hhlp91dLQY— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) October 14, 2019
Sondland had been set to testify last week, but Trump initially demanded he not show up, although Sondland says he was ready from the get-go. House Democrats promptly issued a subpoena demanding Sondland’s testimony, and the Trump team eventually relented. Sondland has become a major player in part because of his text conversations with fellow officials about the Ukraine scheme. At one point, he wrote that Trump was really after a “deliverable,” meaning the sought Biden dirt from Ukraine. Those text conversations also suggest that aid and a summit in D.C. with the White House were made dependent on Ukraine producing dirt.
In case you were wondering, Trump is definitely still in a perpetual state of losing his mind over the whole thing. This Monday, quoting conservative commentator Mark Levin, he railed on Twitter that the “Democrat Party has hijacked the House of Representatives” — although just to be clear here — is that what they’re calling the due process of the election of a Democratic majority to the House in 2018? Trump and his cronies love to drone on and on about how supposedly House Democrats’ impeachment efforts constitute a “coup” meant to overturn the 2016 election or whatever, but they always leave out that in the time since 2016, the American people placed a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives that’s now trying to keep him in line.
Featured Image via screenshot
