Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger “repeatedly” requested a job in the Trump administration.
Pompeo made the comment when responding to remarks Kinzinger made about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Do not let my colleagues pretend today that Trump and Pompeo didn’t set in motion the Afghanistan withdrawal. They did,” Kinzinger tweeted on Tuesday. “I knew Pompeo in the house. He was a hawk on Afghanistan until trump. He knew better, he owns this as well. Trump Pompeo and Biden all to blame.”
Pompeo served as secretary of state during a portion of former President Donald Trump’s tenure in office. Prior to taking on that role, Pompeo served as CIA director. He had previously served as a lawmaker from Kansas in the U.S. House of Representatives.
On Thursday, Pompeo tweeted, “@adamkinzinger repeatedly asked me for job in Trump Admin (Air Force Sec, Amb), and for wife. Now attacks our Afghan plan that saw no US fatalities/no Taliban takeover/no Americans left behind. Adam, I enjoyed our work in Congress. What’s happened to you? YOU should know better.”
The Biden administration was widely panned last year for botching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In a statement last year, Kinzinger took issue with the move to withdraw American troops. “I’ve said countless times that withdrawing our troops emboldens our enemies and puts our allies in grave danger. And yet, both President Trump and President Biden made their announcements anyway—broadcasting to our enemies that we were leaving and telling our allies around the world that we had given up.”
Kinzinger was one of the 10 House Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching then-President Trump last year in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot, and he is one of the two GOP lawmakers to serve on the House select committee created to investigate the episode.