Mike Pompeo and wife broke ethics rules on use of State Department resources, report says
Investigation found couple had got employees to carry out personal tasks more than 100 times
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Your support makes all the difference.Mike Pompeo and his wife broke federal ethics rules on the use of State Department resources.
The former Secretary of state and his wife, Susan, asked employees under him to carry out personal tasks for them more than 100 times, a government watchdog has found.
The State Department’s inspector general determined that the couple had asked employees to book salon appointments and even buy them gold nut bowls to give as gifts, according to the report first obtained by Politico.
Mr Pompeo served the trump administration until Joe Biden took office in January, and is expected to compete for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Investigators reportedly dug through emails and documents and interviewed staff to find a string of violations, which also included getting government staff to make dinner reservations, collect their pet dog, and arranging tours for Mr Pompeo’s political allies.
The couple asked a top State Department appointee and other staff to “undertake work of a personal nature, such as picking up personal items, planning events unrelated to the Department’s mission, and conducting such personal business as pet care and mailing personal Christmas cards,” the State Department’s Inspector General concluded.
Employees told the investigators that they viewed requests by Mrs Pompeo to come with the backing of her powerful husband.
Mrs Pompeo also got staff members to buy her friend a T-shirt, send flowers to sick friends, and to come into the office at the weekend one year “to envelope, address, and mail personal Christmas cards for the Pompeos,” the report states.
The Pompeos required the staff to do tasks for them regardless if they were on or off-duty, and did not pay them separately for non-State Department work, it added.
And the report says that at least 30 times, Mike or Susan Pompeo had State Department employees “making restaurant reservations for personal lunches and dinners with Pompeo family members or friends”.
The report did not look into Mr Pompeo’s “Madison Dinners”, where he would invite elite members of the political, legal and business world to taxpayer-funded dinners in the historic Diplomatic Reception Rooms.
A lawyer for Pompeo cited in the report described it as “replete with factual errors” and claimed investigators were biased against the diplomat and his family.
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