When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on a diplomatic trip to Latin America earlier this year, he quietly tacked on a stop in Florida to a retirement enclave populated by prominent Republican donors. When he went to London late last year on official business, Pompeo added another quiet meeting with Republican donors. It came on the heels of an official trip to Kansas, at which point the cabinet secretary huddled with billionaire donor Charles Koch.
The New York Times took note on the significance of the pattern.
In each of those instances, Mr. Pompeo did not put the visits on his public schedule. He and his aides avoided telling the reporters traveling with them about the meetings, though some news organizations reported them afterward…. Mr. Pompeo, President Trump’s most loyal and powerful aide, has not tried to hide his political ambitions. But he has chosen not to disclose certain meetings that appeared to be linked to those plans while on taxpayer-funded trips.
Indeed, it’s worth emphasizing that there may be other related meetings that have not yet come to light.
All of this comes against a backdrop in which the Kansas Republican has also been accused of, among other things, hosting a series of secret gatherings with powerful elites in which Pompeo was “essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions.”
The secretary of State, of course, has also allegedly misused federal resources to benefit himself and his family — which may have contributed to Pompeo’ directing Donald Trump to fire the State Department’s independent watchdog, Inspector General Steve Linick, late last Friday night.









