Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been in hot water over alleged misconduct in office for a year or more, thanks in large part to a State Dept. employee’s whistle-blower complaint.
Now Pompeo’s critics are cranking up that heat following release of a heavily redacted copy of the 4-page whistle-blower’s account.
It says that “top officials enabled misconduct by Mr. Pompeo even after the whistle-blower voiced the concerns internally — an alleged circle of complicity that was not previously known,” reports the New York Times.
“I directly witnessed much of the behavior,” the whistleblower wrote, adding that there were other witnesses, who sought guidance from senior State Dept. leaders but were “blocked” from doing so.
At the heart of the latest revelations is an investigation of Pompeo by his department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, who was subsequently fired by President Trump on Pompeo’s recommendation.
Three congressional committees are currently investigating Pompeo’s role in Linick’s dismissal.
The whistle-blower writes that “some officials — the names are redacted — were repeatedly made aware of the misconduct concerns, but none took action, and several ‘specifically directed subordinate staff to continue facilitating questionable activities after the concerns were raised,’” the Times says.
Pompeo, a Republican and former congressman from Kansas and a member of the Tea Party Movement, is well known to harbor political ambitious, including a possible run for president in 2024.
He has hosted elaborate, taxpayer-funded dinners at State Dept. headquarters, at which most of the guests were GOP donors and political figures; he has delivered off-the-books speeches to conservative groups in Florida and Iowa; he quietly attended a sit-down meeting with wealthy, conservative Republican donors during an official trip to London last December.
Along with “adding political meetings to official trips,” says MSNBC, “Pompeo is also accused of ‘misusing federal resources to benefit himself and his family,’” in particular his wife, Susan.
“From the outside, Secretary Pompeo’s conduct has been deeply troubling for a long time, and now we can see the kind of red flags it was raising inside the State Department,” said Clark Pettig, a spokesman for the progressive website American Oversight, which obtained the whistle-blower report and turned it over to the McClatchy newspaper chain.
“Even with the heavy redactions, the details of this complaint are cause for concern as Secretary Pompeo continues to hold questionable, political events around the country,” Pettig told CNN.
Returning to Linick, the State inspector general, Pompeo insists he was unaware of multiple investigations into his conduct, and denies that pressing the president to fire Linick was retaliation.
“However, Linick told Democratic and Republican lawmakers and select staff from the House Foreign Affairs and House Oversight committees, and Democrats from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in early June that he didn’t believe there was ‘any valid reason that would justify [his] removal,’” CNN says.
