WASHINGTON _ A whistleblower complaint from a State Department employee about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's conduct, made public for the first time through a lawsuit and obtained by McClatchy, reveals that eyewitnesses made repeated attempts to inform executive leadership and legal advisers about his "questionable activities."
The whistleblower said they had additional evidence to back up their allegations against Pompeo, according to a redacted complaint to the State Department inspector general's hotline. The complainant said concerned parties were "blocked" from reporting the activity to the department's legal affairs office.
"I directly witnessed much of the behavior," the whistleblower wrote. Others, the complaint states, "tried on several occasions to obtain clarifications and guidance from senior leadership in (the executive secretariat) and from the Office of Legal Advisers, but were blocked from doing so."
The whistleblower wrote that several people _ whose names were redacted because of the ongoing inquiry _ "were made aware of these concerns on repeated occasions."
"To my knowledge, none of them ever took action to resolve the issues, and several of them specifically directed subordinate staff to continue facilitating questionable activities after the concerns were raised."
The whistleblower said that they witnessed concerning activities in Washington, D.C.; New York, Florida and overseas.
The State Department redacted large portions of the four-page document _ including names, dates and specific details of the questionable conduct _ that it shared with American Oversight, a watchdog group that sued the department for whistleblower complaints regarding Pompeo's conduct.
Justifying many of those redactions, the State Department said that the information was the subject of an ongoing investigation _ confirming for the first time that at least one inquiry into the secretary continues after President Donald Trump fired the department's longtime inspector general, Steve Linick, at Pompeo's request.
"In some ways, this is good news, because there's some indication now that the inspector general's office has not backed off of investigating the secretary's conduct," Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said. "But in other ways, there's much we still don't know about that conduct."
Testifying before Congress last month, Linick confirmed that his office had been investigating whether Pompeo and his wife, Susan, had been conducting personal business on government time, as well as his involvement in a questionable arms sale to Saudi Arabia, before the inspector general was fired May 15.
While Linick declined to discuss details of the investigation, he acknowledged that one inquiry was examining the Pompeos' use of a political appointee to run personal errands. He told lawmakers that he faced internal pressure from aides to the secretary to end the inquiries.
"I think the Florida datapoint is incredibly interesting," Evers said. "There were reports that the secretary made a visit to the Villages in Florida to meet with a high-powered Republican donor."
As is the case in other government agencies, State Department employees are able to anonymously report concerns to their department inspector general through a protected hotline service.
McClatchy first reported in May that multiple reports were made to the IG hotline regarding Pompeo's conduct, and that the treatment of one of his top aides from Kansas, Toni Porter, was a subject of the inquiry.
The State Department declined to comment.
