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eliot engel
Citing His 'Alarming Disregard' for the Law, House Committee Launches Contempt Proceedings Against Pompeo
"You don't get to repeatedly defy congressional subpoenas and undermine the Constitution with no consequences," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Aug 28, 2020
The Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee announced Friday that it is launching contempt proceedings against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over his "alarming disregard" for the law and ongoing defiance of subpoenas for documents in two separate investigations.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that Pompeo "seems to think the office he holds, the department he runs, the personnel he oversees, and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit."
"From Mr. Pompeo's refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the president's political rivals to his speech to the [Republican National Convention] which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the Constitution provides to prevent government corruption," said Engel, who was defeated by progressive educator Jamaal Bowman in New York's June primary.
\u201cBREAKING: Chairman @RepEliotEngel announces that the Committee will begin work on a resolution holding Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in contempt.\n\nThe Secretary\u2019s ongoing defiance of two duly authorized subpoenas has left the Committee no further option.\nhttps://t.co/gAUbY5Jqk1\u201d— House Foreign Affairs Committee (@House Foreign Affairs Committee) 1598628152
Engel said his panel had "no further option but to begin drafting a resolution finding Secretary Pompeo in contempt of Congress" after the nation's top diplomat refused to hand over records related to the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
The New York Democrat also pointed to Pompeo's withholding of documents purportedly related to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden--records that the secretary of state has already given to two Republican-led Senate committees. In a statement announcing a subpoena for the documents last month, Engel accused Pompeo of turning the State Department "into an arm of the Trump campaign."
"After trying to stonewall virtually every oversight effort by the Foreign Affairs Committee in the last two years," said Engel, "Mr. Pompeo is more than happy to help Senate Republicans advance their conspiracy theories about the Bidens."
Acting Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Kaldahl informed Engel in a letter (pdf) Thursday that Pompeo does not intend to comply with the subpoena.
Following Engel's announcement of the contempt proceedings, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted Friday that "you don't get to repeatedly defy congressional subpoenas and undermine the Constitution with no consequences."
\u201cYou don\u2019t get to repeatedly defy Congressional subpoenas and undermine the Constitution with no consequences. \ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udffd\u201d— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Rep. Ilhan Omar) 1598631517
The contempt proceedings come as Pompeo is also under investigation by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas)--vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee--for addressing the Republican National Convention this week while on a taxpayer-funded trip to Jerusalem.
"The Trump administration and Secretary Pompeo have shown a gross disregard not only of basic ethics, but also a blatant willingness to violate federal law for political gain," Castro said in a statement Tuesday. "Congress has a responsibility to stand up for the rule of law and hold them accountable for this corrupt behavior."
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The Democrat's Hawkish, Dead-End Foreign Policy Is Also Very Bad Politics
Is the party finally willing to recognize the failures—both morally and politically—of its pro-war stance?
Jul 03, 2020
For three years, my organization, Win Without War, and others helped pro-diplomacy activists make their voices heard in Congress in support of President Obama's diplomatic efforts with Iran. Hundreds of thousands of them had done just that -- signing petitions, writing emails, making phone calls, and meeting face-to-face with their representatives and senators in Washington and their hometowns. At every step of the way, congressional offices told us that pro-diplomacy voices had outweighed those opposed by ten-to-one. But then something strange happened. Suddenly, the calls for and against the Iran nuclear deal were coming in at an equal rate.
It was unlikely that the success of having achieved a historic diplomatic nuclear agreement with Iran, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as its formally known, had suddenly made the U.S. public swing against diplomacy. Yet as paid TV ads attacking the JCPOA started popping up and the anti-diplomacy phone calls came pouring in, a dangerous mindset started to spread throughout the halls of Congress: It was going to be bad politics for Democrats to stand with the president and against a small cohort of powerful, deep pocketed special interests.
This was going to be a fight. Determined to defend diplomacy, progressives went all in, but so did anti-diplomacy forces. We now know, for example, that one organization alone, an AIPAC front group called Citizens United for a Nuclear Free Iran, spent $8.3 million on paid phone calls, most likely the very calls causing Congress to suddenly think the public's opinion was mixed. Millions more were spent on television ads offering a dire preview of what would await any member of Congress who voted to support diplomacy.
And in the heat of the long, hot summer, Rep. Elliot Engel, then the highest ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he was breaking with President Obama, and would oppose the JCPOA. At the time, Congressman Engel no doubt thought he was making a safe political choice. His allies flooding the airwaves and phone lines against the deal would surely be there if he ever needed them in an election. Yet this past week, five years later, it's likely that that decision -- and what it said about Engel's preference for conflict over diplomacy -- cost him re-election.
Much has already been written about Engel's stunning primary loss to first time candidate Jamaal Bowman, a former middle school principal in the Bronx. Pundits argue that Bowman's high profile endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez, Engel's absence from his New York district at the height of the spring's pandemic, and Engel's embarrassing hot mic moment (which helped send Bowman's fundraising into overdrive) propelled Bowman's victory over Engel. And there's no doubt these factors played significant roles in the historic upset. But had it not been for Engel's deep discord with his own party on foreign policy, there may never have been a primary challenge to capitalize on those moments and endorsements in the first place.
It says something about House Democrats that they would let their most senior foreign policy position be filled by someone who, like Engel, was so at odds with the Democratic caucus on numerous foreign policy issues. But that is fundamentally what happened when Engel took over the gavel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He was one of only two dozen House Democrats out of 188 who ultimately voted against the Iran deal. Just one year later he would join with an even smaller group of Democrats to give the Republicans a narrow majority and defeat an effort to stop selling Saudi Arabia cluster bombs, bombs they were then dropping on civilians in Yemen. And of course this all followed his enthusiastic support for the Iraq War. Bowman made all of these issues central to his campaign and attacked Engel directly on this record.
Others have laid out the full history of Engel's awful record, so there's no need to recount it all here. But what stands out is that on these issues, the biggest foreign policy questions of the day, the chosen Democratic foreign policy leader was, in some cases quite dramatically, at odds with the majority of his party. For years, the conventional wisdom was that such heresy simply didn't matter if it was confined to foreign policy. The Democratic primary voters of New York's 16th Congressional District just helpfully reminded everyone just how wrong that particular conventional wisdom was.
The truth is that this is hardly the first, and likely won't be the last time that voters send a Democratic member of Congress home for being hawkish. For instance, members of Congress who voted for the Iraq war were, over time, more likely to have been given the boot by their voters than those who opposed it. Meanwhile, despite the fever dreams of many political prognosticators in the summer of 2015 as attack ads about the Iran deal hit the air, no incumbent Democrats lost an election because of their support for the JCPOA. It turns out that being on the same page as the overwhelming number of Democratic voters is actually good politics.
And now that the voters have spoken, House Democrats will face their own decision. Shortly following the November elections, the incoming Democratic caucus of the 117th Congress will gather in Washington to select its new leadership. Of course, like with all elections, the jockeying and campaigning doesn't wait until the final vote and indeed is already well under way. Though the question before Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and others is clear, will they once again allow their highest ranking foreign policy position to be filled by someone at odds with their own caucus and their voters, or will they heed the calls of change?
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What Jamaal Bowman's Historic Win Represents for the Palestinian People
For decades, the pro-Israel lobby was able to carry the day in Congress because Members feared the repercussions of criticizing Israel. That tide is turning.
Jun 29, 2020
On Tuesday, June 23, 2020, Jamaal Bowman made history by winning the Democratic Party primary in New York State's 16th Congressional District. Here's why his victory is so significant.
Bowman beat Eliot Engel, a 16-term incumbent Congressman who served as Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and had the backing of nearly the entire Democratic Party establishment, including former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and ran on an unabashedly progressive platform that included support for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. He was outspent by a margin of two to one. And because Bowman had taken positions calling for justice for Palestinians, "dark money" pro-Israel super-PAC's spent an additional $2,000,000 in independent expenditures in an effort to tear down his character and defeat him. Despite all of these challenges, Jamaal Bowman won, sending the message that change is on the way.
Bowman's victory against an entrenched incumbent came on the heels of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 2018 unseating of 10 term Congressman Joseph Crowley in the nearby 14th District of New York. There were similarities between the two races and some important differences.
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman are young people of color who defeated older white men whose constituents in their congressional districts are majority minority voters. And because both of the young winners were community activists who had developed strong grass roots networks and the incumbent Members of Congress they were challenging had grown lazy and entitled, assuming their victories were assured, Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez represented both generational change and the importance of maintaining direct contact with the voters one seeks to represent.
Both of these upstart candidates were members of the DSA, running on a progressive agenda that promoted universal health care, a quality education, a decent job, a clean environment, and affordable housing as fundamental human rights. Both were endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders (Bowman was also endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren), while Crowley and Engel had the support of the Democratic leadership in the Senate and House of Representatives. As such, they represent the insurgent left's victories over the party's centrist establishment.
While both of the defeated Members of Congress relied largely on large donations from big donors or political action committees to fund their campaigns, Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez raised their campaign funds from individual small donors - replicating the approach taken by Sanders in his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs. Their wins were victories for campaign finance reform.
These similarities aside, there were two fundamental differences between the Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman victories that contribute to making the Bowman win historic. Ocasio-Cortez's victory was a shock that caught both Crowley and the Democratic establishment by surprise. Determined that it wouldn't happen again, New York State's Governor, its two Senators, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Clinton (in her only endorsement of the 2020 election) all lined up behind Engel. By winning against this formidable line-up, Bowman demonstrated that the progressive wave isn't a fluke.
"Just as the police force is an intimidating force in so many black communities, I can connect to what it feels like for Palestinians to feel the presence of the military in their daily lives in the West Bank. I can also understand the crushing poverty and deprivation in the Gaza strip."
And then there's the role played by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Ocasio-Cortez's position on justice for Palestinians matches those of Bowman, it never became much of a factor in 2018, largely because Crowley hadn't made it an issue and because Ocasio-Cortez's race was run largely under the radar. She didn't come under attack from pro-Israel groups until she was in Congress and came to the defense of her sister freshmen members, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
Because Bowman was running against the very pro-Israel Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the party's establishment and the pro-Israel lobby didn't want a replay of the Ocasio-Cortez win, they invested heavily in the effort to defeat Bowman.
Engel had long been an AIPAC point person in Congress. In 2018, as he was poised to become the HCFA Chair, speaking at an AIPAC conference he pledged to use his position "to make sure that Israel continues to receive support... I want tell you that I sit down with AIPAC on every piece of legislation that comes out."
Protecting Engel was important. One AIPAC-allied group, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMI), spent more than $1.5 million in the Engel/Bowman race. And not unlike the $1.4 million they spent earlier this year to attack Bernie Sanders, their ads were largely personal attacks on Bowman's character. The DMI was smart enough to know that there were no votes to be won by supporting Israel - since Democratic voters were so alienated by Netanyahu's policies nothing was to be gained by selling spoiled goods.
Despite the money spent against him, Bowman never wavered. A week before the election, he was challenged by a rabbi from Riverdale, an affluent neighborhood in his district. In an "open letter" published in the Riverdale Press, the rabbi expressed his concern that Bowman was espousing anti-Israel views and made a number of rhetorically inflammatory charges - with Palestinian terrorism mentioned in seven consecutive paragraphs.
Bowman refused to accept the bait and instead responded in a deeply respectful "open letter" of his own in which he made clear his views on foreign policy, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "are rooted in the values of human dignity" and his life experiences. In one moving passage, he noted:
"The uprising across the country against police violence also makes me empathize with the everyday experience and fear that comes with living under occupation. Just as the police force is an intimidating force in so many black communities, I can connect to what it feels like for Palestinians to feel the presence of the military in their daily lives in the West Bank. I can also understand the crushing poverty and deprivation in the Gaza strip. I believe Palestinians have the same rights to freedom and dignity as my Jewish brothers and sisters. I will fight for their liberation just as hard as I will fight for yours."
In the end, not only did Jamaal Bowman win, he won by a decisive margin carrying all areas of his district and all major demographic groups. Interestingly, from vote tallies I've seen, he also beat Engel in precincts that were heavily Jewish.
This is yet another reason why Jamaal Bowman's victory was historic.
For decades, the pro-Israel lobby was able to carry the day in Congress because Members feared the repercussions of criticizing Israel. That tide is turning. Polls show that a majority of Democrats now support greater balance in US policy, oppose Netanyahu's behavior, and believe that aid to Israel should be cut because of violations of Palestinian human rights. That's why AIPAC was forced to "allow" Members of Congress to condemn Israel's plans to annex West Bank lands. And now their efforts to hurt Jamaal Bowman and save Eliot Engel failed.
This isn't the first time that AIPAC has lost in their effort to defeat an "enemy" or save a "friend." And it may be too much to hope that Bowman's win will finally shatter the myth of AIPAC's invincibility. The most extreme elements of the pro-Israel lobby will not give up easily, so we must remain vigilant. But as Jamaal Bowman's win demonstrates, change is coming and that is what makes his victory so historic.
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