Al’s Blog - Pompeo 3

In the United States of America, government appointees swear an oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” 

The oath is to the Constitution, not to one’s immediate supervisor in the executive branch and certainly not to the president personally. The FBI’s own website contains a useful essay written by FBI Academy legal instructor Jonathan Rudd about the significance of the oath of office. 

“It is significant,” he writes, “that we take an oath to support and defend the Constitution and not an individual leader, ruler, office, or entity ... a government based on individuals — who are inconsistent, fallible, and often prone to error — too easily leads to tyranny on the one extreme or anarchy on the other.”

That is the foundation of the rule of law in this and other countries, and to expect officials to do anything else would be fundamentally toxic to the endurance of the American republic.

The concept of a Loyalty Oath is the loyalty to an organization, institution, or state for which one is a member or participant. Similarly, it is not a pledge or oath of allegiance but more of a legal document a person signs and is legally bound to.  Mike Pompeo has signed such an oath or he would not have been appointed to the Trump Cabinet.  If the interests of the United States of America diverge from the personal interests of the President, we must be confident of that the loyalty of the Secretary of State is with the Constitution!

Donald Trump has disrespected the Senate and the American People by making Mike Pompeo the de facto Secretary of State before the Senate had confirmed him.  This action is another example of the way Trump bullies his way around anything he sees, as an obstruction of his will.  

If the Senate panel could not agree to his appointment before Trump’s action, it is even more important that they not succumb to it now, or forever be remembered as the Trump Toadies Committee!  The crisis that put Pompeo in North Korea was one of Trump’s own making.  He fired his Secretary of State, and he permitted the meeting with the North Korean leader.  Everything about the affair has been of Trump’s making.  For once Senators, vote your conscience.  Don’t take the easy way out!  If you didn’t trust Pompeo last week, this week’s development should make you even more leery.

Hearings are scheduled to resume on Monday!

Al