Whistleblower says top officials enabled Pompeo’s behavior
Edward Wong
A State Department employee who reported witnessing misconduct by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as hearing “numerous firsthand accounts” of such behavior was blocked from further addressing the issue by top department officials who were protecting Pompeo, according to a newly public copy of the employee’s whistleblower complaint.
The heavily redacted version of the complaint indicates that top officials enabled misconduct by Pompeo even after the whistleblower made the concerns known internally — an alleged circle of complicity that was not previously known. After encountering resistance from the department’s executive and legal offices, the whistleblower filed the complaint with the agency’s Office of the Inspector General, which apparently prompted an investigation into misuse of taxpayer resources by Pompeo and his wife, Susan.
Details of the inquiry into the Pompeos, coming amid a cloud of accusations that critics say shows a pattern of abuse of taxpayer money, have emerged gradually since May, when congressional aides told journalists about it. The inquiry was one of at least two investigations that the inspector general, Steve A. Linick, was conducting into Pompeo’s actions at the department when President Donald Trump abruptly fired Linick in May, at the urging of Pompeo. Linick, known to be cautious and nonpartisan, had served as inspector general since 2013 and ran an office of hundreds that investigated fraud and waste at the State Department.
Three congressional committees are investigating Pompeo’s role in the firing of Linick. Critics say Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, appears to have prodded the president to fire Linick out of retribution and to avoid accountability. Pompeo has admitted he knew about at least one of Linick’s investigations — a nearly completed inquiry into whether Pompeo acted illegally last year in declaring an “emergency” to bypass Congress to push through $8.1 billion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
However, Pompeo has said he did not push to fire Linick as retaliation. He said Linick was “undermining” the mission of the department, though he declined to give details.
The four-page whistleblower complaint was obtained by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, through a Freedom of Information Act request into any records of complaints submitted over the conduct of Pompeo.