Constitutionalists who had hopes that President-elect Trump would scale back the federal government’s invasion of the privacy of Americans in the name of national security have cause to be concerned about Trump’s choice of Representative Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
A three-term Republican congressman from Wichita, Kansas, Pompeo (shown) is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, where he has been responsible, along with other members of the committee, for conducting oversight of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. His score on the Freedom Index is 67 percent. Produced by The New American magazine, the Freedom Index rates members of Congress based on their fidelity to the U.S. Constitution.
As such, it is fair to say that Pompeo’s votes please constitutionalists about two-thirds of the time.
Before Pompeo was a member of Congress, he was president of Sentry International, an oil-field equipment company. He is a graduate of West Point and served as an Armor Branch cavalry officer from 1986-1991. Later, he went to Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and from where he obtained his law degree, and went on to practice law.
Since his election to the U.S. House of Representatives as an open supporter of the Tea Party movement in 2010, Pompeo has compiled a mostly conservative voting record. He is strongly pro-life, and is a staunch backer of oil and gas pipelines.
He rejects the views of the global-warming alarmists. In 2013, Pompeo said, “There are scientists who think lots of different things about climate change. There’s some who think we’re warming, there’s some who think we’re cooling,” and he has dismissed President Barack Obama’s climate-change plans as “damaging” and “radical.” He has called for the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas registry program, and has supported the repeal of wind power production tax credits, calling them an “enormous government handout.”
In many ways, Pompeo is a strongly conservative Republican. He opposes ObamaCare, is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and was highly critical of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance during the 2012 attacks on Americans in Libya. His vote to require an audit of the Federal Reserve System is also encouraging.
But in the areas over which his CIA directorship will be more relevant, Pompeo cannot be classified as a defender of various constitutional safeguards of civil liberties.
For example, in May he voted against an effort to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which had authorized President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. The results of this open-ended military force authorization illustrates a reason to oppose mere congressional authorizations, rather war declarations. Congress chose to leave it up to the president whether to use military force in Iraq, instead of a more specific declaration of war. This unconstitutional delegation to the president of the congressional power to declare war is why the AUMF is still in effect, 15 years later.
Another area in which Pompeo has been willing to surrender the constitutional authority of Congress was his vote in 2015 to give President Obama “Trade Promotion Authority.” This bill provided that Congress could vote only up or down the multilateral trade deal known as TPP. These globalist trade deals are not actually “free trade” bills, but are rather transfers of U.S. sovereignty to international governments. This was the issue in Brexit — the withdraw of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU). British citizens finally got fed up with being told what to do on issues such as immigration by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats of the EU. Yet, giving any president such authority is not only a violation of the principle of separation of powers; such deals inevitably lead to a reduction in an American independence.
This is illustrated by the Congress buckling under to the World Trade Organization WTO) on the Country of Origin Labeling Law (COOL). Pompeo voted to repeal the Country of Origin Labeling Law (COOL), which required beef, pork, and chicken be labeled as to what country it came from, giving consumers more information. This bill was passed after Congress received a directive to do so from the WTO, and members of Congress opted to surrender to the WTO.
He also supports the indefinite military detention of any person detained under AUMF authority in the United States. Of course, champions of the Bill of Rights have expressed concern that this authority is a gross violation of the civil liberties of Americans, as well (such as the right of an accused person to due process before they can lose their life, liberty, or property).
Likewise, constitutionalists cannot be pleased with Pompeo’s vote in April 2015 in support of the CyberSecurity Protection Advancement Act. Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) opposed the bill, arguing it violates “the Fourth Amendment … and give[s] the government unwarranted access to the personal information of potentially millions of Americans.”
Pompeo is an ardent supporter of the surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA), saying they do “good and important work.” In February of this year, Pompeo said that whistleblower Edward Snowden “should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.”
He voted in 2014 against an amendment to a Defense funding bill that proposed to prevent any defense monies be used to allow intelligence agencies to sift through electronic metadata that contains personal information of American citizens and legal residents. Representative Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), the author of the amendment, said, “The American people are tired of being spied on.”
Apparently, Pompeo has a different view of such government spying, insisting, “Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed. “
Although Pompeo’s nomination is from President-elect Trump, Pompeo was originally a supporter of Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
