In the Trump administration, the modus operandi seems to be that when the going gets tough, throw
one another under the bus.
“He should step forward and explain what he did,” the former
New York City mayor said. “The whistleblower falsely alleges that I was
operating on my own. Well, I wasn’t operating on my own. I went to meet Mr.
Zelensky’s aide at the request of the State Department.”
The Arizona State University newspaper, The State Press, broke
the news on Friday that Volker had submitted his resignation to Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo.
According to the whistleblower
complaint, a day after Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, in which
the president sought help in smearing a leading Democratic rival in the 2020
election, Volker met with Zelensky, along with U.S. Ambassador to the European
Union Gordon Sondland.
“Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to
me by various U.S. officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly
provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands
that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy,” the whistleblower complaint stated.
Giuliani also reportedly met with an adviser to Zelensky, Andriy
Yermak, in Spain, and had reached out to several other Ukrainian officials
after Trump told Zelensky in the phone conversation that Giuliani and U.S. Attorney
General William Barr would be point men on Trump’s alleged extortion effort.
Barr has denied any involvement.
Also on Friday, the leaders of the House committees
on foreign affairs, intelligence, and oversight sent a letter
to Pompeo announcing a subpoena for several documents related
to the Ukraine scandal. The committees had requested the documents on Sept.
9 and issued a deadline of one week, which Pompeo appears to have ignored. In
the new letter, the lawmakers warn that Pompeo’s “failure or refusal to comply
with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment
inquiry.”
It’s clear that Pompeo has many questions to answer about
the State Department’s role in all of this and probably other shenanigans. That was apparent at least a week
ago, when Pompeo and Trump weren’t
even on the same page about whether to publicly release a summary of the Zelensky
phone call.
The dominoes are starting fall, and the most intriguing part
is that it’s Trump’s own cronies who are pushing them over. Let’s see what Volker
has to say for himself.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
