URBANDALE, IOWA — Mike Pompeo had just taken the lectern to address a packed room of Iowa Republicans when he took notice of a row of TV cameras in the back.
“I think there’s going to be some big announcement,” Pompeo said.
The crowd laughed. Reporters perked up.
“But my announcement really is about you and what I want to talk about today is you,” he said, before launching into a stump speech in all but name.
Pompeo, the former Kansas congressman and a top Cabinet official under former President Donald Trump, visited Iowa on Friday, kicking off an unofficial but open flirtation with running for president.
His breakfast speech to a conservative club in the Des Moines suburbs marked the beginning of his courtship of Republicans in a state that has both nurtured and smothered the ambitions of countless aspirants. Pompeo is one of several Midwestern Republicans jockeying to inherit Trump’s base ahead of 2024, along with former Vice President Mike Pence, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
The Iowa trip also comes as documents obtained by McClatchy provide a fuller picture of conduct by Pompeo as CIA director and secretary of state that has raised ethical and legal concerns.
The records show that despite the Navy raising “factual, legal, fiscal, and ethical” concerns with the Pompeos’ request for military housing in 2018, he secured a lease at an Army facility, paying the Defense Department $63,000 annually in rent with a recommended term of up to 5 years.
Pompeo’s wife, Susan Pompeo, directed an elaborate renovation of a room in the house to serve as an office, “trip packing room and dressing room,” that involved extensive State Department personnel coordination, requests for cabinet installations and artwork, according to records.
Both the State Department and the CIA are withholding records documenting exchanges with their inspectors general regarding complaints about Pompeo’s conduct, leaving questions hanging over his potential candidacy.
Pompeo has long been dogged by allegations that he used official resources for personal ends and that some of his taxpayer-funded trips, including jaunts to Kansas amid speculation he might run for Senate, improperly commingled diplomacy and politics. The ethics complaints against him could prove to be liabilities in a presidential campaign.
On Friday, Pompeo largely steered clear of the ethics controversies while addressing the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, a western suburb of Des Moines. During the roughly hourlong event, he made only one glancing acknowledgment of the ethics issues facing him.
Responding to a question about holding officials in Washington accountable, Pompeo in an aside noted he had been investigated by the State Department Inspector General.
“I think I still am — not a friendly system,” he said, before moving on.
Pompeo spent much of the event, which included a lengthy question-and-answer session with the audience, attacking China, assailing “woke” rhetoric and promoting his foreign policy achievements, including moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
He spoke in lofty tones about the founding of the United States and conservative values. And he flattered his audience, reminding them his wife, Susan Pompeo, was born in Iowa City.
“I know that the work people do all across rural parts of America and places like we are here today matters an awful lot to the very things that matter to me and my faith and my family,” Pompeo said. “And I wanted to make sure you all know that we’re going to win. In the end, in the end, there is not a doubt in my mind that our ideas are right, our values are correct.”
Alan Cobb, president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and a Pompeo confidant, said the former official is seriously exploring the possibility of running for president.
“I think the exploration is prudent for him,” Cobb said. “He’s certainly a qualified, legitimate candidate for president.”
No longer can presidential hopefuls get away with quiet, early trips to Iowa.
Pompeo’s Friday visit has grabbed attention in Washington, and was recorded by C-SPAN as the first event in its coverage of the 2024 presidential election.
Other possible candidates, including Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina, are set to visit the state soon.
“Mike Pompeo and these other people who are going to Iowa and New Hampshire for president this early are essentially running for president,” said Bob Beatty, a professor at Washburn University who every four years assigns students to follow a candidate around Iowa for two days.
“But the way they do it when they’re doing it this early,” Beatty said, “it allows them to drop out without having officially declared they’re running.”
For his part, Pompeo portrayed his Iowa presence as part of an effort to boost Republicans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. He said he would also travel to Alabama soon, “which I think will provide cover for coming to Iowa, right?”
Pompeo, who resigned from Congress in 2017 to join the Trump administration, never officially closed his campaign operation. It’s lain dormant, but with $1 million that could serve as kindling for a nascent presidential campaign.
Since leaving the State Department, Pompeo has taken steps that will allow him to keep a prominent profile, even though he is no longer in office.
He has joined the Hudson Institute, a foreign policy-focused think tank based in Washington, as a distinguished fellow. The position gives him a forum to criticize the Biden administration.
He also landed a second Washington job that might be even more indicative of how he’s positioning himself for the 2024.
In February, Pompeo signed on as senior counsel for global affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal organization run by Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lead attorney at his first impeachment trial.
The center praised Pompeo as “an ardent advocate for our ally Israel” and said his “experience will be key to advancing our work for the persecuted Church globally, our national security law practice, and our effort to provide expert foreign policy analysis.”
The center was founded by Pat Robertson, a televangelist and prominent Trump supporter who predicted in October that Trump would win a second term, triggering a series of events, including a war on Israel, that would lead to the end times.
Pompeo will be the commencement speaker in May at Regent University, founded by Robertson. It’s a clear sign that Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, is courting the Christian right, a major voting bloc in GOP primaries.
Pompeo on Friday touted his role in moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. “The Israelis said their capital was in Jerusalem. Who are we to argue?” he said.
Ilana Freedman, an intelligence analyst who lived in Israel for 16 years and attended Friday’s event, said the former secretary was “in the right place” on Israel.
“The playing field has shifted totally” under Pompeo, she said.
Pompeo’s foray into Iowa comes after his speech last month to the American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC conference, another important destination for potential Republican candidates.
He spoke alongside other hopefuls, such as Hawley and Noem, who will address Republicans in Pompeo’s home state next month as keynote speaker at the Kansas Republican Party’s annual convention.
Trump promoted both Hawley and Noem, among others, as the future of the party in the debut episode of “The Truth with Lisa Boothe,” a podcast hosted by the Fox News contributor, released Monday.
“Josh is terrific,” Trump said of the Missouri senator.
Pence and Pompeo’s names were conspicuously absent from his list.
Republican contenders face a delicate task. They must start laying groundwork for a campaign without offending Trump, whose future plans remain unclear, and his loyal core of grassroots donors. And they must cultivate their standing with Trump whose endorsement could prove decisive if he stays out of the race.
Pompeo on Friday cycled between praising Trump and highlighting his own record as secretary of state. Asked about the aftermath of the November election — during which Trump allies filed a series of baseless lawsuits in an attempt to overturn the results — and what he told the former president, Pompeo said he wasn’t in the “center of this” and said he wouldn’t talk about his conversations with Trump.
“Sadly, some of my colleagues didn’t abide by that rule,” Pompeo said. “But I did believe firmly that the president had a responsibility and obligation that he lived up to to fight this as far as he could and as hard as he could in every single material way and he did that. He did his best to litigate. He did his best to push back.”
Iowa Republicans are accustomed to presidential hopefuls dropping by with unannounced but clear intentions and are taking the same approach with Pompeo.
“I’m sure there are some — there are some that he’s the only person that they would ever vote for. And maybe the only person they ever did vote for in cases. But I don’t see that,” said Gloria Mazza, the chair of the Polk County Republicans, which includes Des Moines.
Tom O’Brien, a retired manufacturing representative from Urbandale, has supported Trump in the past. But he said the former president’s future plans, whatever they may be, don’t matter to him.
“I think Trump already is the past,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said Pompeo is on his 2024 shortlist and also mentioned Hawley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He said Noem was on his list until about a week ago but that he isn’t sure about her stance on a bill banning transgender girls and women from women’s sports after she vetoed the proposal and called for revisions.
David Kensinger, a Kansas Republican strategist who was an advisor for former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s brief 2008 run for president, said Iowa residents take their first in the nation role seriously and want to “kick the tires” before buying.
“In particular, they want to see genuine belief, Midwestern conservative values and an understanding of an economy integrating agriculture, manufacturing and services,” Kensinger said. “Mike Pompeo checks every box.”
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