A former State Department adviser known to be anti-Trump is scheduled to testify behind closed doors Wednesday before the congressional committees leading the House impeachment clown show.
Michael McKinley—formerly a top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a longtime diplomat— is expected to appear for a transcribed interview, according to CNN, which suggests he is not coming under subpoena.
The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees are conducting the impeachment inquisition in hopes of finding something to hang the president on.
McKinley has served as ambassador to Peru, Colombia, as well as Afghanistan, and was appointed by former President Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Brazil in January of 2017. In 2018, he was tapped to be an adviser to Pompeo at the State Department.
McKinley resigned last Friday amid growing unease in the State Department over President Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to have Ukrainian authorities investigate corruption and 2016 election meddling in their country.
His resignation also comes a day after President Trump made it clear in a presidential tweet that he supports Brazil’s efforts to join the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The joint statement released with President Bolsonaro in March makes absolutely clear that I support Brazil beginning the process for full OECD membership. The United States stands by that statement and stands by @jairbolsonaro. This article is FAKE NEWS! https://t.co/Hym9ZATHjt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2019
The State Department had previously notified Brazil in a curt letter signed by Sec. of State Mike Pompeo that the United States would not be supporting Brazil’s inclusion in OECD.
Last Thursday, Pompeo also said that the U.S. did support the Bolsonaro government’s aspiration of joining the group, although he said the United States would be backing Argentina first.
“We have welcomed Brazil’s ongoing efforts regarding economic reforms, best practices, and a regulatory framework in line with the standards of the OECD,” Pompeo said in a statement. “We are enthusiastic supporters of Brazil’s entry into this important institution and the United States will make a strong effort to support Brazil’s accession.”
A day later, McKinley resigned as Pompeo’s top aide.
It remains a mystery why Pompeo tapped the Obama holdover for the post in the first place, as he and his far-left Bolivian wife Fatima are rumored to be quite hostile towards Trump.
Latino Trump supporters have been on to this for a long time.
https://twitter.com/filmvest/status/1010917181088034816?s=20
McKinley also has quite a bit of baggage from his days as a diplomat for the Obama administration.
In 2016, he helped broker a deal that helped the narco-terrorist group FARC gain power in Columbia.
Under the ceasefire accord between the then-president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos and FARC in Havana, revolutionaries were forced to disarm themselves and hand over their weapons to the United Nations, but were allowed to form a legal political party, the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force.
Up to 2,500 FARC members reportedly continue to abide by FARC’s original doctrine and continue with drug trafficking.
During the Cartagena Summit in 2012, McKinley and former president Obama were joined for dinner by then–president of Columbia Juan Manuel Santos and the notoriously corrupt Brazilian billionaire Marcelo Odebrecht.
@POTUS please when you talk to #CorruptSantos ask him why he put Marcelo Odebrecht in the same table with FMR.Pdt Obama in Cartagena summit pic.twitter.com/IhY24FWR7S
— John Milton Jr (@JBAGBAM) February 10, 2017
Four years later, Odebrecht, the former chief executive of Latin America’s largest construction company, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for his role in a massive corruption scandal involving current and former political leaders, including former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, another friend of Obama who ended up in jail for corruption.
Odebrecht was convicted of bribery, money laundering and organized crime after he and others involved in the scandal essentially “looted taxpayers to fund Communist campaigns,” as award-winning international journalist Alex Newman put it in an interview about the South American money laundering operation.
According to Newman, McKinley, while serving as ambassador to Brazil, actually worked against the candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro (known in Brazil as “the tropical Trump”) in the run-up to the country’s 2018 presidential election.
“We have deep state swamp creatures at the highest levels of power in Washington D.C.,” Newman said.
“Jair Bolsonaro and his people are leading a counter-revolution in Brazil,” Newman explained. “They are getting these communist criminals dislodged from power at every level. A lot of them are going to prison where they belong.”
“Let’s hope that this counter-revolution that took root in Brazil will spread all across the region,” Newman added. “Hopefully it will make its way up into Venezuela, and into Chile … Now we need to hope that that same counter-revolution comes into the United States and the communists that have been trying to hijack our government—and in many respects has hijacked our government—can be exposed and will be dealt with.”