Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is speaking at the Republican National Convention Tuesday evening, remotely from an official visit to the Middle East, in a move that spits on, then tramples, government ethics.
Under Pompeo’s own leadership, in a January 2020 email sent by Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun with Pompeo’s approval, State Department employees were directed to legal memos with the instruction, “Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention or convention-related event.” May not even attend. Yet Pompeo is speaking at the RNC—though remotely.
In addition to that explicit prohibition on Senate-confirmed officials, State Department employees who aren’t Senate-confirmed are instructed that, while they can attend “a partisan political rally, fundraising function, election party, meet-the-candidate event, or other political gathering as a spectator” in a purely personal capacity outside of work, that is only the case when the employees are in the United States. Which Pompeo will not be at the time he addresses the Republican National Convention.
Pompeo’s remarks are apparently being pre-recorded from Jerusalem, so if you really, really want to stretch it, there’s an argument that he is not attending the RNC. But in an administration that cared about basic ethics, this would be clearly prohibited.
According to a State Department spokesperson, “Secretary Pompeo will address the convention in his personal capacity. No State Department resources will be used. Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo's appearance. The State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance.”
Riiiight. The White House is making that “personal capacity” argument about Ivanka Trump, which simultaneously makes some sense and shows the problems with nepotism. But there is no plausible argument that Mike Pompeo has a personal capacity here, and we go back to that information that he himself endorsed earlier in the year: “Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention or convention-related event.”
If they may not even attend it, you have to figure they also can’t participate, however remotely.
But this is Team Trump and it’s not just that they don’t worry about pissing on basic ethics—they take pride in it.
