Pompeo exposed of misusing public resources for his selfish scheme: US media

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday addressed inquiries about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose "improper behavior" during his tenure has been reported by several media organizations in the country.

According to National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), since Pompeo became America's top diplomat in 2018, he has held taxpayer-funded dinners regularly with his wife, Susan Pompeo, to entertain figures in politics, business, media and entertainment. The dinners have been held 24 times until the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down in March. The New York Times reported that Pompeo secretly visited some important Republican donors during an official trip to Florida in January. In mid-July, Pompeo used State Department resources to participate in the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, which was an event attended by Republican candidates interested in running for president.

Pompeo's associate also said that he was considering running for an open Senate seat in Kansas and hoped to run for president in 2024. The New York Times also reported that a State Department employee witnessed and possessed "numerous firsthand accounts" about Pompeo's misconduct, which were obstructed by top department officials. The details and people involved in the accounts published afterwards were redacted.

Details of the inquiry into Pompeo and his family, who have been accused of "private use of public resources" have gradually emerged since May. According to a report, the inquiry was one of two investigations conducted by State Department Inspector General Steve A. Linick.

U.S. Senate Democrats released an investigation report entitled "Diplomacy in Crisis" on July 28, two days before Pompeo was set to testify on Capitol Hill. The 46-page report stated that Pompeo and his superiors brought partisanship into the State Department, and plunged the foreign policy group, which should have been detached from the conflict, into a "work environment of fear and mistrust", leading to a large loss of civil servants.

According to the report, less than two months after Secretary Pompeo was confirmed in 2018, Mari Stull, a senior advisor at the State Department's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, compiled a "loyalty list", labeling employees as either "traitors" or "unfaithful". After Pompeo asked President Trump to fire Linick in May, many employees feared possible retaliation. Even State Department attorneys became increasingly afraid to expose internal violations of laws and regulations.

During the Senate hearing on Thursday, when asked about Linick's dismissal, Pompeo said the reason was his poor capacity for work. Before his dismissal, Linick was opening investigations into Pompeo's potential misuse of taxpayer resources and his effort to push an eight-billion-dollar arm sale to Saudi Arabia.