Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dodged questions Wednesday about whether he’s concerned President Trump may be making regular use of a cellphone that lacks top-level security features to protect his personal calls and tweeting from hackers and foreign surveillance.
“I have managed for 16 months not to talk about conversations I’ve had with the president. I do not intend to violate principle today,” Mr. Pompeo told lawmakers on Capitol hill during one of the livelier exchanges of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
The secretary of state made the comment in response to questions about Mr. Trump’s phone from Rep. William Keating, Massachusetts Democrat, following a report that the president uses a White House cellphone that isn’t equipped with sophisticated features designed to shield his communications.
Some lawmakers have seized on the issue since Monday, when Politico reported that Mr. Trump — in a departure from the practice of his predecessors — has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use.
Citing anonymous administration officials, the report said Mr. Trump uses at least two iPhones, one of which is capable only of making calls, while the other is equipped only with the Twitter app and preloaded with a handful of news sites. It also said the phones are issued by a White House Information Technology outfit and the White House Communications Agency, an office staffed by military personnel that oversees White House telecommunications.
While aides have urged Mr. Trump to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, the president has resisted their entreaties, going as long as five months without having the phone checked by security experts and telling the aides it was “too inconvenient” to switch, one administration official told Politico.
Some media have a had a field day with the report, including Vanity Fair, which ran with a headline Tuesday that claimed the president’s “Unsecured iPhones” make former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server “Look Like Fort Knox.”
Mr. Keating pounced on the issue during Wednesday hearing, asking Mr. Pompeo, “if it’s true, would you feel compelled to say, ’Mr. President you’ve gotta change your phone, it’s a security risk?’”
“Wouldn’t you at least do that for America?” Mr. Keating asked, laughing as he delivered the question.
Mr. Pompeo was at first jovial in his response, asserting that he believes he and the Massachusetts Democrat are “both great patriots.”
But Mr. Keating quickly interrupted, asking again: “You wouldn’t tell the president if he had an unsecured phone, ’Hey Mr. President, you gotta get a new phone.’ You wouldn’t tell him that? Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
Mr. Pompeo then turned serious, saying he simply does not talk publicly about his private conversations with Mr. Trump.
“I do not intend to violate that principle today,” the secretary of state said.
“Well,” responded Mr. Keating, “I’m gonna take that, if you will, that you’d never tell the president, ’Hey, you better get a new phone that’s secure.’”
Mr. Pompeo shot back: “I can’t account for how you’ll take it.”
“You shouldn’t construe the absence of a comment from me one way or the other,” the secretary of state said. “Know this, every time I see a security issue, I try to do my best to fix it, whether its something that I got wrong or something where someone else made an error as well.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.