Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t back down in the face of media umbrage over the firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.
Not only did he say President Donald Trump canned Linick at his recommendation, Pompeo added that he should have done it much sooner.
“I recommended to the President that Steve Linick be terminated,” Pompeo said on Wednesday, at his first press conference since the firing. “Frankly, should’ve done it some time ago.”
Trump fired the State Department’s internal watchdog on Friday night, saying he had lost confidence in Linick, who was appointed in 2013 under President Obama.
“It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General,” he said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While Democrats and their media allies had a meltdown, Pompeo reminded reporters of an important fact.
“The president has the unilateral right to choose who he wants to be his inspector general in every agency in the federal government,” he said. “They are providentially confirmed positions and those persons, just like all of us, serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States.”
On Monday, Pompeo confirmed he asked the president to fire Linick because he was “undermining” the department’s mission.
“I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn’t performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to, that was additive for the State Department, very consistent with what the statute says he’s supposed to be doing,” he said. “The kinds of activities he’s supposed to undertake to make us better, to improve us.”
When a reporter followed up Wednesday to ask for more details on his reasoning, Pompeo shut her down.
“Unlike others I don’t talk about personnel matters. I don’t leak to y’all,” he said. “I can’t give you specificity. We’ll share with the appropriate people the rationale.”
Pompeo dismissed media reports about Linick digging into the Trump official using official staff to run personal errands and that he and his wife threw expensive dinner parties at taxpayers’ expense — he said Monday he wasn’t even aware that Linick was investigating allegations against him.
David Adams