Mike Pompeo questions Dr. Oz’s ties to Turkey after it was revealed that the Republican Senate candidate had voted in the 2018 election.

Dr. Mehmet Oz. AP Photo / Matt Rourke, file

• PA Senate nominee Dr Mehmet Oz has voted in the 2018 Turkish elections, ABC News reported.

• Mike Pompeo, a former Trump secretary of state, backed Oz’s opponent.

• Pompeo said the post should be held by a “patriotic American conservative”.

Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under President Donald Trump, questioned Dr Mehmet Oz’s ties to Turkey on Friday.

ABC reported on Wednesday that Oz voted in the 2018 Turkish elections, although he denies ever being politically active in the country.

Oz, backed by former President Donald Trump, is running in the Republican election in the Pennsylvania Senate against David McCormick, who is backed by Pompeo. The primary ones are scheduled for May 17.

“Maybe everything is innocent, maybe everything is straight,” Pompeo said during a press briefing on Friday, The Hill reported. “But we, the people of Pennsylvania and the Americans, whom he will represent as one of the 100 members of the United States Senate voting on important national security issues, need to understand the scope and depth of his relationship with the Turkish government.

Although nothing illegal has happened, as Oz is a dual citizen of both Turkey and the United States, Pompeo said it was a matter of who was “best suited” to hold office in Pennsylvania, a state previously represented. from the Patriotic American Conservative.

Oz campaign director Brittany Yannick told Insider that the comments were “pathetic and xenophobic”.

“Dr. Oz has already said that when he is elected to the Senate, he will renounce his citizenship,” Yannick said. “There is no security problem, and David McCormick knows that Dr. Oz has retained his dual citizenship to make it easier to care for his mother, who has Alzheimer’s and lives there.”

On Friday, Trump crashed in Pennsylvania with Oz, who was greeted with boos and taunts every time his video editing was shown. The controversial television doctor is facing a check that he is not from Pennsylvania, that he used his father-in-law’s address to vote in the state last year, and to promote unwarranted medical treatment.

Read the original article in Business Insider