WASHINGTON — State Department employees were asked to prepare then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for political events in Kansas as he was flirting with a run for a U.S. Senate seat there in 2019, rankling government staff who saw the requests as ethics violations, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint and emails obtained by McClatchy.
The documents provide fresh insight into Pompeo politicking behind the scenes during a period when the secretary was engaged in a flurry of hushed donor meetings and controversial visits to Kansas.
Newly obtained emails from that period show the former secretary’s wife, Susan Pompeo, asking State Department staff for help organizing political events in their adopted home state, connecting with local companies and drawing a crowd to one of his events.
And a whistleblower complained to the State Department inspector general’s hotline in October 2019 that department staff were asked to prepare Pompeo for an event with BG Products, a Wichita automotive services and parts company. Aides produced talking points on Kansas’ oil drilling and production industry that had little to do with the business of state, according to the complaint.
Multiple State Department staff were tasked with the requests, the whistleblower said, claiming the activity posed a “conflict of interest” and amounted to “ethics violations.”
“The questions in the tasker seemed strange to me,” the whistleblower wrote. “They did not seem like questions a State Department official would write.”
A representative for Pompeo did not immediately respond Tuesday to a question about the newly disclosed complaint.
The questions were for Pompeo’s appearance at a company convention in Washington and was shortly before Pompeo made a trip to Wichita with Ivanka Trump that same month.
“As we continue to seek economic prosperity for Americans, I appreciate every opportunity I have to meet with members of our thriving and innovative business community. Thanks to the International BG Distributor Convention for having me today,” Pompeo said on Twitter at the time.
A representative for BG Products did not respond to questions about the nature of the event or how Pompeo’s appearance was arranged.
While Pompeo decided around the end of 2019 not to pursue the Kansas Senate seat, he and his wife continued using State Department personnel and resources for personal and political purposes — a cloud that has followed the former secretary as he openly considers a run for president in 2024.
The State Department inspector general’s office released a report last month that found the Pompeos repeatedly misused department staff and resources for personal business, citing over 100 instances of misconduct.
The new emails and whistleblower complaint were obtained by American Oversight, an independent watchdog group, through Freedom of Information Act requests.
“Mike Pompeo’s political ambition is not now, nor has it ever been, a national security priority,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said. “From using his office to groom political connections to retaliating against whistleblowers looking out for the public interest, time and again, Secretary Pompeo appears to have put his own interests ahead of the nation’s.”
Throughout 2019, Pompeo was taking numerous meetings with donors and holding high-profile events. These included delivering a speech at Kansas State University in September of that year as part of the prestigious Landon Lecture Series, with sources around him telling reporters he was mulling a run for the open U.S. Senate seat in Kansas.
The Landon Lecture Series, named for Alf Landon, a former Kansas governor and the 1936 Republican presidential nominee, has featured multiple presidents and presidential candidates.
State Department emails show Susan Pompeo corresponding with the secretary’s longtime aide Toni Porter in the lead-up to the K-State speech with a particular focus on a VIP reception coinciding with the lecture.
“Just talking with Mike — any feel for numbers at the private meet & greet at KSU? Once you see the audience during Mike’s speech, I wonder how you might grab anyone who definitely needs to know about it?” Susan Pompeo wrote, noting that the secretary would need to be alerted if anyone from Wichita drove up, including a specific name that the State Department redacted in its response to American Oversight.
Pompeo represented the Wichita region in the U.S. House for six years prior to joining the Trump administration and has maintained close ties to the Wichita business community.
Susan Pompeo was also involved in preparations for a State Department summit in Overland Park in March of 2019, the first of several trips the secretary of state would make to Kansas that year.
Then-Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Manisha Singh emailed Susan Pompeo days before the event asking for help in arranging for a Kansas businesswoman to introduce Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Sigrid Kaag at the event.
Singh referenced an earlier conversation with Susan Pompeo and asked whether Ann Foley Konecny, CEO of Wichita-based Foley Equipment, which sells tractors and other machinery in Kansas and Missouri, would be up for the job.
“Yes. Tell whoever calls Ann to say that Mike and I suggested they call....!” Susan Pompeo replied. “Ann loves to do things like that.”
Foley Konecny and her husband, Paul Konecny, gave more than $8,000 combined to Pompeo during the 2010 cycle when he was first elected to Congress, according to federal campaign finance records.
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(McClatchy investigative reporter Ben Wieder contributed to this report.)
