On Monday evening, three days after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Republican Congressman from Kansas Mike Pompeo was officially confirmed by the Senate in a 66-32 vote to be the CIA Director in the Trump Administration. He was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on Monday night.
Pompeo was expected to be confirmed on Friday after Trump took office, but a number of Senate Democrats obstructed the Republican Congressman from becoming CIA director in time to accompany Donald Trump on his trip to the CIA building on Saturday. Senator Tom Cotton, a Pompeo supporter, slammed Democrats for delaying the process.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are in Washington this weekend at a designated special national-security event, yet the Democrats are obstructing the nomination of Mike Pompeo as CIA Director for no good reason,” Sen. Cotton said.
“For Senator Wyden’s sake, I hope the jihadists take the weekend off from trying to kill Americans,” he continued.
In November, Donald Trump announced that his pick for the next CIA Director was Congressman Mike Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas who was a West Point graduate, a U.S. Army Soldier and a businessman years before he was a politician. Pompeo has spent his entire career in Congress as being a staunch advocate and defender of the truth, not afraid to give fellow representatives or government officials on either side of the aisle the third degree in order to get answers for the American public he so proudly represents.
Pompeo held steadfast to getting answers from Hillary Clinton and her involvement in the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi as well as her inappropriate use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as Secretary of State, which had many in the Democratic party trying to label him a “partisan” member of Congress. The criticism has never swayed Pompeo’s desire for a more transparent government however, and his extraordinary efforts to better understand the Iran Deal lead him to be the first to uncover that the Administration was involved in secret side deals with the Islamic Republic.
Pompeo sat down with American Military News one year to the day that the Iran Deal went into effect for an exclusive interview about the secret side deals.
Last week during a confirmation hearing in front of the Select Committee on Intelligence Rep. Pompeo took a hard stance against Iran and the Iran Deal, something he has been very vocal about throughout his time in Congress.
“It was my view that the JCPOA was a mistake for American national security,” Pompeo said. “And now, if I’m confirmed, I will continue to do that in my role as director of the CIA. I will endeavor to provide straight information to you all about the progress that the JCPOA has made.”
He also went onto say that as CIA director he would evaluate Iran’s compliance with the agreement in exchange for lesser sanctions but warned that the Iranians “are professionals at cheating.”
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