U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives with his wife Susan Pompeo at the airport in Prague, Czech Republic, on August 11, 2020.
Petr David Josek | Reuters
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent more than $ 10,000 of taxpayer money on pens made in China for private dinner attendees he organized, including CEOs, conservative media figures and Republican donors, according to Department records of State.
The pens Pompeo distributed to Madison Dinner guests averaged more than $ 26 each, according to records, first reported on Thursday by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
CREW noted that while the top US diplomat distributed 400 of the expensive pens, he publicly criticized China for “trade abuses that cost American jobs and deal huge blows to economies across America”.
In a tweet on Thursday, he said: “We must remain tough on China”.
Pompeo’s then chief, now ex-President Donald Trump, ran for the White House as a Republican on an “America first” platform and also often defended China.
In addition to the cost of the pens, which in an elegant touch were engraved with the words “Madison’s Dinner”, taxpayers paid the bill of approximately $ 40,000 in other party-related expenses, according to CREW, which received documents about the pens through a Freedom of Information Act process.
CREW noted that an employee of the State Department’s protocol office sent more than a dozen emails to the pen vendor in the summer of 2018 classifying the order details and asking questions about things like whether it would be possible to raise a medallion on pen.
Records show that the pens were purchased from Madden Branded Goods, a Florida-based company that presents itself as “a team of creative thinkers and team players passionate about logo gifts”.
In all, the State Department disbursed at least $ 10,433 for the pens.
A spokeswoman for Pompeo, considered a potential candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pompeo named dinners after the fifth American Secretary of State, James Madison, who was elected president after serving as the country’s top diplomat.
NBC News, which first reported details of the dinners, said earlier that State Department officials involved in the dinners “raised internal concerns that the events were primarily using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions” .
Only about 14% of the participants were diplomats or foreign officials.
Pompeo is a former CIA director and a Republican congressman from Kansas.
NBC reported that the “elite group” of guests that Pompeo and his wife, Susan, have honored in about two dozen Madison Dinners since 2018 included “billionaire CEOs, Supreme Court judges, political heavyweights and ambassadors” .
That report was published in May, days after State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was dismissed by Trump, while the internal watchdog investigated the alleged misuse of Pompeo by a departmental political nominee to perform personal tasks for him and his wife.