"What’s Going on at Pompeo’s State Department?" with Nahal Toosi and Scott Anderson
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2020
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In mid-May, President Trump fired the State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. The ouster came as a surprise, and although it is clear that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked Trump to fire him, the reasons Pompeo gave for it have changed over time. This is just one of a series of controversies coming out of the Department of State in recent months. With the House Foreign Affairs Committee investigating and additional Inspector General reports becoming public over the last month, Margaret Taylor sat down with Politico’s foreign affairs correspondent, Nahal Toosi, and Lawfare senior editor Scott Anderson, to sort through it all. They talked about the implications of Secretary Pompeo’s speech at the Republican National Convention, the IG’s report on Pompeo’s controversial decision to declare an emergency to expedite the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, questions about the use of Department resources in support of Susan Pompeo and the State Department’s responses to the House and Senate requests for documents related to Biden and Burisma.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | The State Department says, look, he was doing this in his personal capacity and there were |
| 0:38.3 | no taxpayer resources used. |
| 0:41.8 | But that's just really hard to understand. |
| 0:44.2 | I mean, the Secretary of State is the Secretary of State 24 hours a day. |
| 0:48.0 | Plus he was on an official trip overseas. |
| 0:51.8 | You know, just simply getting there required government aircraft. |
| 0:55.0 | Being on that rooftop in Jerusalem, no doubt gave diplomatic security a lot of work to do. |
| 1:00.2 | It's just hard to understand why they think that they can say he was doing this in his personal |
| 1:04.1 | capacity and the U.S. taxpayers weren't paying for it. |
| 1:07.7 | But that's all they're saying. |
| 1:09.2 | They're not saying, oh, and legally we decided these rules didn't apply to him. |
| 1:12.7 | They just hard answering that question. |
| 1:15.4 | I'm Marker Taylor and this is the LawFair podcast, August 28, 2020. |
| 1:20.6 | In mid-May, President Trump fired the State Department Inspector General Steve Linneck. |
| 1:25.4 | The Alster came as a surprise and although it is clear that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo |
| 1:30.3 | asked Trump to fire him, the reasons Pompeo gave for it have changed over time. |
| 1:36.2 | This is just one of a series of controversies coming out of the Department of State in recent |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.