Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday distanced himself from acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s Thursday admission that the White House withheld aid from Ukraine pending their help investigating Joe Biden and his family in order to gain political capital. “I never saw that in the decision-making process that I was a part of,” Pompeo told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week adding, “the conversation was always around what were the strategic implications [and] would that money get to the right place?” “I’ll leave it to the chief of staff to explain what it is he said, I’m telling you what I was involved with, I’m telling you what I saw,” Pompeo said.
Despite Mulvaney’s clarity on Thursday that there was a quid-pro-quo, he has since walked back that statement. When Stephanopoulos, the former White House Communications Director under President Clinton, pressed Pompeo on whether it would have been “inappropriate” for the United States to withhold the aid, Pompeo said he wouldn’t “get into hypotheticals and secondary things based on what someone else has said.” Stephanopoulos replied: “Except it’s not a hypothetical... the chief of staff said it did.”
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