Ex-Trump administration official delivers blistering testimony about Pompeo and Trump's Ukraine scandal

Michale McKinley, who was a top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo until his abrupt resignation last week, revealed the reasons for his sudden departure in testimony to Congress on Wednesday — and it was a searing indictment of the Trump administration.

It was expected when McKinley stepped down in the middle of the ballooning Ukraine scandal that he might have been frustrated as the events unfolded, but parts of his testimony, shared by Bloomberg News reporter Laura Litvan, were shockingly forthright about this fact:

The timing of my resignation was the result of two overriding concerns: the failure, in my view, of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the Impeachment Inquiry on Ukraine; and, second, by what appears to be the utilization of our ambassadors overseas to advance domestic political objectives.

I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents. I was convinced that this would also have a serious impact on foreign service morale and the integrity of our work overseas.

Since I began my career in 1982, I have served my country and every President loyally. Under current circumstances, however, I could no longer look the other way as colleagues are denied the professional support and respect they deserve from us all.

We already knew that, under Trump, the State Department — a valuable tool for promoting peace abroad — had been deal repeated crushing blows. The fact that Pompeo is overseeing even more thorough destruction of the department's morale is hardly surprising.

But the fact that someone who has served in government for as long as McKinley has feared — as others in the State Department have expressed — that the president was using foreign governments to "procure negative information on political opponents" adds to the mounting and damning evidence of President Donald Trump's impeachable conduct.