Former U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo, along with his wife Susan, assigned personal tasks to officers paid for with taxpayer money, an ethical breach pinpointed in a report by the State Department’s Inspector General unveiled Friday.
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These accusations are the result of internal investigations that sparked a heated controversy when former President Donald Trump sacked last May, at the request of the then Secretary of State, the Inspector General who had just come from ‘open this investigation.
The investigation continued, including after the departure of the Republican government in January.
And his result comes at a time when Mike Pompeo is already engaged in a campaign that does not say his name with a view to potentially running for the Republican candidacy for the presidential election of 2024. Not a day goes by that he does not curb Joe’s Democratic government. Biden.
The Inspector General’s office found that the Pompeos had more than 100 times assigned “tasks of a personal nature” to “an agent recruited on political criteria and other officials in the secretary of state’s office”, according to the report. The report.
“These requests do not comply with the ethical rules of the State Department” and the US government, believes the inspector, whose services are responsible for independently monitoring the exercise of power by the head of diplomacy.
Last year, the minister had swept aside these suspicions as being “crazy”, accusing the inspector who opened the investigation, Steve Linick, of being a “bad actor” – to better justify his dismissal.
According to the report, the couple notably asked a “counselor” to walk their dog, and to make more than 30 restaurant reservations for private meals, such as a Sunday brunch at the “Cheesecake Factory”.
Susan Pompeo also asked the employees of the “State Department” to take care of acquiring gifts for their hosts when they were invited to the home of a television journalist or political commentator. Same request for a souvenir T-shirt for the daughter of a personal, religious friend in Ukraine.
In addition, the inspector noted that their son Nick Pompeo had benefited from a discount normally reserved for government staff on a hotel room, when he had accompanied his parents to an American football match presented as an official trip.
However, the report does not recommend any punitive measures against Mike Pompeo, who has recently been recruited by the conservative Fox News channel as a political commentator.
The ex-secretary of state, more loyal to Trumpist ministers, has been repeatedly accused by Democrats of using his office for political gain, including when hosting dinners with conservative figures and donors at the department of state.