If it's dire and urgent and directly related to duty and oath of office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is predictably missing in action. Take the hearing House Democrats planned earlier this week on the Soleimani assassination—Pompeo no-showed. Or how about the closed-door congressional briefings on embassy security State Department officials were scheduled to give? No such luck, no explanation given by Pompeo or his team.
So when new evidence emerged from the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday night indicating that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch may have been surveilled in Kyiv and physically at risk, Pompeo sat on it. Because that's what you do when you're a garbage manager who couldn't even squeeze out a statement of support for a veteran State Department employee whose reputation was being smeared by Rudy Giuliani and his henchmen.
As former Assistant FBI Director Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC the day after the creepy texts exchanged by indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas and a GOP donor and Trump supporter came to light, "If we were living in any kind of normal world, we would have the Secretary of State & the Attorney General of the United States ordering the FBI and the diplomatic security service to investigate any assertion that someone inside the US embassy in Ukraine has somehow compromised the security of the ambassador."
But we aren't living in any kind of normal world, so the Justice and State Departments declined to lift a finger even as a House panel announced an inquiry into the matter. Finally Ukraine, not known for having the most robust legal system, launched its own investigation on Thursday and requested assistance from the FBI in the case.
Apparently even Pompeo felt a little shamed by the fact that Ukraine had shown more concern for his own employee than he has during this entire harrowing ordeal. As CNN notes, "after more than 48 hours of silence," Pompeo now says the State Department will finally launch its own inquiry.
"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. Any time there is someone who posits that there may have been a risk to one of our officers, we'll obviously do that," Pompeo said.
Wow, what a white knight in shining armor.