Top State Department aide resigned because of Pompeo's silence on Marie Yovanovitch
Michael McKinley, the former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told Congressional impeachment investigators that his sudden resignation was, in part, due to Pompeo’s silence about the recall of Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to two people in the room for McKinley’s testimony.
After a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which the president disparaged Yovanovitch, McKinley asked Pompeo to write a "statement of support" for the former ambassador, but Pompeo remained silent, McKinley told Congressional investigators, according to a person in the room.
Trump called her "bad news" and sad that her "attitude towards me was far from the best” in a July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, according to an abridged transcript released by the White House.
According to the person in the room, McKinley painted a picture of a State Department that was rebuilding after the tenure of the previous secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. But McKinley said that it disturbed him that officials working on Ukraine were being sidelined because of political pressures, according to a source in the room and a person familiar with his testimony.
He also cited a State Department inspector general report in August that found political appointees mistreated and intimidated civil servants in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, according to a person familiar with his testimony.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said that McKinley in his testimony expressed strong support of his colleague Yovanovitch. "And that’s understandable," Meadows said.
At the time of his resignation, McKinley was a veteran State Department official, whose 37-year career included posts in Brazil, Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said that McKinley is one of several witnesses who is "helping to fill in the portrait of an official State Department process that was under attack basically by Trump and Giuliani."