This Is About a Whole Lot More Than Who's Walking Mike Pompeo's Dog

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

20 May 20

Trump's firing of the State Department inspector general may be tied to an arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

ast Friday, in what has become the customary weekly defenestration, the administration* dismissed Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general. Linick was widely—and correctly—seen as another casualty in Camp Runamuck’s war on oversight. As the weekend ground on, it was reported that the IG had been looking into how Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife had used State Department personnel to perform personal errands, including walking their dog. However, on Monday, the story put on a great deal of weight. From CNN:

The allegation Pompeo declined to cooperate with the investigation came after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Eliot Engel, claimed the State Department inspector general fired by President Donald Trump on Friday, Steve Linick, had nearly completed an investigation into Pompeo's controversial decision to fast-track the same arms sale.

"I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick's firing. His office was investigating — at my request — Trump's phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia. We don't have the full picture yet, but it's troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed," Engel, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement to CNN Monday.

The story thus morphed from a question about Pompeo’s dog to a question of whether Pompeo was operating as lapdog for the House of Saud. And, in an interview, Pompeo sent the kitty screeching from the burlap. From the Washington Post:

“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.”

I don’t know Linick, but the only thing anyone can “undertake” to improve these people is to vote against them in November.