ANDERSON, S.C. — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not commit to staying out of the 2024 presidential race if former President Donald Trump, his former boss, seeks reelection.
Pompeo made the remarks Monday before U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan’s Faith and Freedom Barbecue, an annual Upstate South Carolina event where potential presidential candidates have spoken to test their messages in front of a conservative audience in the early presidential primary state.
“We’re going to make our decision based on if we think this is the right place for us to serve,” Pompeo said. “If I come to believe I ought to become president, that I have something to offer the American people, I will run no matter who all decides to get in and who else decides not to get in the race.”
Pompeo served in the Trump administration first as CIA director in 2017 and 2018 before serving as secretary of state until 2021.
Pompeo has been traveling across the country helping candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections where Republicans hope to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“There’s big plans for me to make sure we have a really great election this November and then we will see what the good Lord brings after that,” Pompeo said. “My wife and I are thinking, praying and trying to figure out where to serve next. It could be that we’ll decide to enter the presidential race. It may not, but we’re going to stay in this fight.”
Pompeo’s visit to South Carolina comes three weeks after FBI agents searched the former president’s Mar-A-Lago estate for classified documents he took with him when he left the White House in January 2021.
Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, called the search of Mar-a-Lago “a deeply politicized use of the FBI” and said there were other ways to get the documents. He said the Benghazi committee negotiated to get information off former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal server during the congressional investigation on the 2012 attack on the U.S. facilities in Libya that left four Americans dead.
“They chose a different solution, the Biden administration,” Pompeo said. “They chose to send FBI agents to the home of a former president. That is not the way America ought to be.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized the FBI search after Trump failed to give the National Archives all of the documents it asked be returned. The White House has said that President Joe Biden was not informed of the search before the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago.
Still, Pompeo added he did not take any classified information with him when he left the State Department.
“No one should have classified information out of the appropriate place for classified information anytime. Full stop. Period,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo last visited South Carolina last year when he came to endorse Gov. Henry McMaster for reelection and spoke at the South Carolina GOP’s annual Silver Elephant Gala.
Previous speakers at the barbecue have included former Vice President Mike Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, and former Govs. Scott Walker and Nikki Haley.
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