By investigating investigators into e-mails and other documents and questioning staff members, investigators discovered many instances in which Mike or Susan Pompeo asked State Department staff members to handle personal tasks, including booking salon appointments and private dinners. bookings to upload their dog and arrange tours for the Pompeos’ political allies. Employees told investigators they considered the requests of Susan Pompeo, who was not on the federal payroll, to be supported by the secretary.
Mike Pompeo insisted in an interview with investigators that the requests were often small and the type of things friends do for friends. His lawyer, William Burck, described a draft version of the report he received as a politically biased “compilation of picayune complaints selected by the drafters.”
However, the Inspector General’s Office defended the investigation, noting that many of the rules for such interactions are clear, do not make exceptions for small tasks, and that the Pompeos’ requests ultimately use a considerable amount of time from the employees. . paid by taxpayers.
The tasks assigned to the staff members varied greatly.
Susan Pompeo, for example, asked staff members to buy a T-shirt for a friend; arrange for flowers to be sent to friends who are recovering; and helped her book appointments in the hair salon when she was in New York during the UN General Assembly and had to meet with foreign dignitaries. A year ago, a senior adviser to the secretary and a senior foreign service officer came in over a weekend to envelop, address and mail personalized Christmas cards for the Pompeos, the report said.
State Department personnel were also given more intensive assignments, such as planning events, including for groups to which the Pompeos were affiliated, but in a non-governmental capacity.
The seemingly personal Pompeo tasks required time, either when they were on duty or on duty, the report said. The Pompeos did not compensate the staff members separately for the non-government department-related work, the report said.
The report mentions in detail the personal tasks handled by one government employee, entitled only ‘senior adviser’, but the description of her background is similar to that of Toni Porter, who works as a senior adviser at Pompeo at Foggy Bottom joined after working with him when he was in Congress and head of the CIA.
Mike Pompeo described Porter to investigators as a longtime friend of his family, but Porter told investigators: “She believes she is performing the tasks described in this report as part of her official duties.” Many of the requests Porter handled were clearly related to State Department matters, but it does not appear that others did.
Porter had many of the apparently personal requests. Investigators found that ‘Mrs Pompeo’ would send an e-mail account to the senior adviser’s official e-mail account almost daily to perform various tasks. ‘
According to the report, Porter spent more than three months visiting Washington, DC, in June 2019, through the Kansas chapter of the YPO (formerly the Young Presidents Organization), an organization of which the secretary is a member. wash.”
Susan Pompeo, who asked for Porter’s help, “emphasizes the prior political support of several members for Secretary of State Pompeo’s campaign for the House of Representatives, but does not refer to any connection between the visit and departmental affairs,” the report said.
‘For example, on the list of Mrs. Pompeo noted that one contestant “was one of Mike’s biggest supporters during his years in Congress, which was the largest fundraiser Pompeo held in Kansas,” while another contestant “sat on the Pompeo for the Kansas Finance Council. . ”
Porter “arranged events for the participants in the trip, including arranging tours of various museums, as well as a visit to the Library of Congress and the American Capitol.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs did not pay for the tours or other events arranged for the outside organizations to which the Pompeos were affiliated. However, they argue that this is only more evidence that the events were personal and should not have been dealt with by employees of the State Department.
Their report also points to provisions in federal regulations, such as from the standards of ethical conduct for employees of the executive branch, which state that an employee may not use his public office for his own gain, for the approval of any product, service or business, or for the private gain of friends, relatives or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a non-governmental capacity, including non-profit organizations of which the employee is an officer or member, and persons with whom the employee has employment or looking for it or business relationships. ”
Pompeo’s attorney, Burck, was fierce in his defense. The draft version of the report, Burck said in an official response, “is, in short, a politicized document in the form of an investigative document” that blows small tasks out of proportion.
The lawyer claims that Pompeo’s engineering motivated the investigators to expel Linick, the State Department’s inspector general. The investigators deny these and other allegations against them, noting that the investigation started well before Linick was fired.
Burck noted that it was Susan Pompeo who often directed the requests, not the secretary himself. “We thought the time was long gone for anyone to view women as an extension of their husbands, but that the outdated and offensive view inspired the whole draft report,” he wrote.
On at least 30 occasions, Mike or Susan Pompeo has given State Department employees the task of ‘making restaurant reservations for personal lunches and dinners with family members or friends of Pompeo,’ the report said.
Employees told investigators that they view such tasks as departmental matters because Diplomatic Security officials must work in advance to secure the locations. One staff member said he had made similar reservations for other state secretaries. The report suggests that the department clarify the rules for such requests.
In an unusual case, the son of the Pompeos was Nick. In September 2019, the Pompeos and then Secretary of State for Management Brian Bulatao, a longtime friend of Mike Pompeo, planned to attend a football game at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bulatao and Mike Pompeo are West Point graduates. Nick Pompeo would join them, but because he was not an official guest of the military academy, he had to pay his own way.
Investigators say they found evidence that ‘Bulatao tried to obtain a price reduction for Nick Pompeo’, and that a hotel room booked for him used a ‘temporary tax rate reserved for official matters for federal employees’, reads the report and adds: ‘The Pompeos’ son was not a federal employee. ”
The report did not address questions about the Madison Dinners, a series of rallies held by the Pompeos that sparked allegations that the couple was trying to sharpen their political Rolodexes under the guise of diplomatic work. A person familiar with the matter said investigators were investigating the demand for the Madison Dinners but determined that the couple did not violate rules governing such matters.
The report also did not examine questions about obtaining housing in a military complex of the Pompeos. It was not immediately clear whether the case was being investigated.
One issue that needed more clarity, according to the Inspector General’s office, was that the Pompeos used State Department funds to buy gifts (such as gold nut bowls) for the personally attended and unrelated hosts’ dinners. diplomatic work. Investigators have recommended that the department officially decide whether such gifts can be paid for using taxpayers’ money.
The Pompeos have asked on at least three occasions for Diplomatic Security officials to perform some personal tasks for them, but they mostly did not turn to the group for such requests, investigators found.
In his interview, according to the report, Pompeo repeatedly minimized the requests, arguing that these were merely small tasks that did not need to be investigated so intensely.
Because Mike Pompeo is no longer a federal employee, and his wife was not one, the State Department can do little to punish the couple for the alleged violations of the rule. One of the reasons why the report took so long to complete is that Mike Pompeo persistently refused to commit to an interview until he finally agreed to one at the end of December, less than a month before leaving office. has.
However, the Office of the Inspector General recommended that various departments at the State Department, such as the Office of the Legal Adviser, update or draft new guidelines that determine or clarify the appropriate use of departmental funds and staff members regarding personal tasks.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, now headed by Antony Blinken, sent a brief reply to the Office of the Inspector General in which he accepted the recommendations.
A State Department spokesman asked for comment Friday: “The department appreciates the work of the Inspector General’s office and agrees with all the recommendations, as noted in the report, and will continue to implement them.”