“What the administration appears to want are political operatives who are loyal not to the United States but to the president in furthering his personal, political and financial goals,” said Philip Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration who co-authored a recent op-ed defending Yovanovitch. “That’s where it’s demoralizing for the career diplomats.”

A current State Department staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his job, described the Pompeo letter as “the height of irony.”

Pompeo’s rebuff of Hill Democrats follows a report that his department has ramped up a probe into emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 White House rival, in ways that are ensnaring some career diplomats. In addition, State’s inspector general is due to soon release a major report into alleged political retaliation against career staffers under Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson.

The inspector general recently released a separate report that found an assistant secretary of state, Kevin Moley, acted abusively toward career staff. Pompeo, however, has not fired Moley.

Separately, but still alarming to career employees, are Trump’s attacks on the unnamed whistleblower whose complaint helped prompt the impeachment inquiry. The president has cast the whistleblower’s sources as “spies” engaged in “treason” and implied that they should be executed. He’s also sought to unmask the whistleblower, saying in a series of tweets Tuesday: “Why aren’t we entitled to interview & learn everything about the Whistleblower, and also the person who gave all of the false information to him.”

Yovanovitch is one of several State Department employees House investigators hope to interview as they dig into the impeachment inquiry. She originally was supposed to be deposed Wednesday, before being rescheduled to Oct. 11. The impeachment inquiry was launched after revelations that Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate one of his 2020 political rivals former Vice President Joe Biden.

A congressional aide confirmed Tuesday evening that the State Department inspector general has made an “urgent request” to brief Hill staffers on Ukraine-related issues Wednesday.

Yovanovitch, a decorated diplomat with more than 30 years in the U.S. foreign service, came under fire earlier this year by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as well as Donald Trump Jr., and elements in the conservative media. They claimed that she had an anti-Trump bias, and there were indirect allegations that she’d tried to block Ukrainian investigations into Biden and his son Hunter.

Yovanovitch was known for pressing Ukraine’s government to fight corruption, a position long held by the U.S. government, which has been sending military aid to Ukraine in its battle against Russia. But the conservative attacks nonetheless appeared to undermine her. Pompeo pulled Yovanovitch out of Kyiv in May, some two months before she was due to leave the post.

The maelstrom of attacks on Yovanovitch seemed to reach all the way to the Oval Office. In a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump trashed the ambassador and even appeared to make a veiled threat against her.

“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news,” Trump said, adding later, “She’s going to go through some things.”

The president’s comments, revealed in a detailed call memo released by the White House, spurred outrage among the thousands of civil and foreign service officers who work at State or have done so in the past. Organizations such as the American Academy of Diplomacy and the American Foreign Service Association put out statements in her support.

“Whatever views the administration has of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s performance, we call on the administration to make clear that retaliation for political reasons will not be tolerated,” wrote the academy, a nonpartisan group of former U.S. diplomats.

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The State Department did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Members of the foreign and civil service make up the backbone of the U.S. government, and they are sworn to serve in a nonpartisan fashion. That means they implement U.S. policy regardless of which party or which president is in power. They provide expertise and institutional memory that is supposed to aid an administration’s political appointees.

But from the beginning, Trump’s political appointees viewed the career staffers with suspicion, suggesting that they comprise a “deep state” determined to derail the Republican president’s agenda. Conservative media outlets fueled such claims. Some printed lists of career staffers dubbed “Obama holdovers,” even though many had joined government long before Barack Obama was president.

At the same time, State Department employees angered Trump political appointees early on when around 1,000 signed on to a “dissent memo” expressing their unhappiness with Trump’s executive order banning the citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary at the time, said if the “career bureaucrats” had a problem with the order, “they should either get with the program or they can go.”

Pompeo’s role in the drama is mixed. When he first joined the Trump administration, he led the CIA, and he spoke highly of the men and women who worked for him. He took over as the chief U.S. diplomat from Tillerson, whose support for steep budget cuts, obsession with reorganizing the State Department and failure to turn to its experts alienated many career diplomats.

Pompeo promised to bring “swagger” back to the State Department, and he named a number of career diplomats to top posts. At the same time, he has been exceptionally careful not to show any differences between himself and Trump, so he’s often not publicly defended his department.

For instance, he’s said virtually nothing in public to criticize Trump’s repeated efforts to dramatically cut the State Department’s budget. He’s insisted that he won’t tolerate political retaliation against career staffers, but he’s failed to take steps that many staffers feel is necessary to hold people accountable.

In some cases, it’s not clear what Pompeo can do. He has not fired Moley, for example, but, according to his aides, that’s because Moley holds a Senate-confirmed role and Pompeo legally can’t oust him. Department leaders have counseled Moley about his actions and say they are implementing a “corrective action plan” for his bureau. They won’t say, however, whether Pompeo has ever asked Trump to use his authority to fire Moley.

A former State Department official told POLITICO that Pompeo tried to protect Yovanovitch behind the scenes, and that his decision to pull her out of Kyiv early may have helped her. She wasn’t fired by Trump; instead, she’s still on the U.S. payroll and spending time at Georgetown University. Yovanovitch could not be reached for comment.

Pompeo listened in on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, according to a Wall Street Journal account that the State Department is not disputing. But he’s ignored or deflected questions about the call and his decision to withdraw the ambassador.

The secretary’s letter Tuesday offered some of his most effusive praise of his employees. “I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State,” he wrote.

But given the context, lawmakers and many in the career ranks didn’t buy his concern as sincere. Three Democratic House committee chairmen — Eliot Engel of New York, Adam Schiff of California, and Elijah Cummings of Maryland — accused Pompeo of trying to bully people from appearing on the Hill.

Pompeo “should immediately cease intimidating Department witnesses in order to protect himself and the President,” the lawmakers wrote. “Any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress—including State Department employees—is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.”

Pompeo’s letter also drew derisive comments from people who remember his time as a congressman, when he loudly pressured the Clinton-led State Department to release information about the 2012 attack that killed four Americans, including an ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya.

“It is a bit rich,” said Gordon, who reported to Clinton during her time in Foggy Bottom.

Some veteran government employees fear the revelations from the impeachment inquiry will further demoralize the foreign service and others who work for the State Department.

One sign of that? Since the memo detailing Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was released, dozens of foreign service officers have joined a private Facebook group for those considering quitting their jobs, a member of the group told POLITICO.