The Office of the Inspector General of the State Department released a report on Saturday that determined former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules while still in office. Pompeo and his wife Susan were found to have unethically asked State Department employees to carry out personal tasks.
By analyzing emails and other correspondences, as well as staff interviews, the Inspector General’s office found that both Mike and Susan Pompeo asked staff at various times to book salon appointments, private dinner reservations, pick up their dogs and arrange tours for political allies visiting Washington. The office found more than 100 violations in their report, but not all 100 have been determined by the office to constitute an ethics breach.
The report reads as nearly identical to one from the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General who found former Secretary Elaine Chao also used her staff to carry out personal tasks.
Pompeo told investigators that his requests never exceeded tasks friends would do for friends, and his lawyer, William Burck, has since called the report a biased “compilation of picayune complaints cherry-picked by the drafters.” The report from the Inspector General’s officer, however, determined that Pompeo’s numerous requests to staff eventually constituted a significant amount of time and money to the federal government.
