Pompeo Orders Officials To Retroactively Justify $8Bln Arms Sale To Saudi Arabia - Reports

Pompeo Orders Officials to Retroactively Justify $8Bln Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia - Reports

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has ordered State Department officials to find a way to justify an emergency declaration that allowed the administration to fast-track an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year bypassing congressional scrutiny, CNN reported on Friday, citing sources

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd May, 2020) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has ordered State Department officials to find a way to justify an emergency declaration that allowed the administration to fast-track an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year bypassing congressional scrutiny, CNN reported on Friday, citing sources.

The issue of the arms deal has been in the spotlight since last week when President Donald Trump, at Pompeo's request, fired State Department inspector Steve Linick, who was investigating the sales of weapons to the kingdom. On Monday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel suggested that Linick may have been fired because he was looking into the emergency declaration to permit the deal, something Pompeo has refuted.

Sources told CNN that Pompeo demanded that officials present the situation in a way that the decision made in "an aggressive and unconventional manner" would be fully justified. The same was confirmed by a state department official, according to the broadcaster.

In May 2019, Trump had to turn to the Arms Control Export Act, which grants the president powers to authorize emergency arms sale bypassing the approval of the Congress, to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia after the opposition from lawmakers of both parties initially blocked the deal citing brutal Saudi-led intervention in Yemen's civil war.