Pompeo to be grilled over Putin summit

washington — Did Donald Trump make secret promises to Vladimir Putin? What did the American president tell his Russian counterpart at their Helsinki summit?

US senators, distressed by the Republican billionaire’s recent behaviour, will demand answers from his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when he provides the most closely watched congressional testimony of his young tenure as the nation’s top diplomat.

Lawmakers have been eager for Pompeo to report back about a previous critical summit June 12 in Singapore between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Their demand became all the more urgent after Helsinki, in particular the joint press conference during which Trump was seen by Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike as betraying American interests and being too conciliatory towards Putin.

“The Helsinki press conference was a sad day for our country, and everyone knows it,” Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an occasional Trump critic, told reporters.

Russia will therefore be the primary focus of Pompeo’s 3pm appearance before the committee.

But Corker made it clear his panel will also grill Pompeo about his recent trip to Pyongyang, Trump’s “undermining” of Nato and the alliance’s principal of mutual defense, and the president’s controversial tariffs which appear to be mushrooming into a trade war.