[14] Today, the tight-knit group of graduates—some cheekily refer to themselves (Mike Pompeo, Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulatao), as the "West Point Mafia"—constitutes a uniquely powerful circle at the highest levels of government.

[31] In the 2010 election, Pompeo won the Republican primary for Kansas's 4th District congressional seat with 39% of the vote,[32] defeating state senator Jean Schodorf (who received 24%) and two other candidates.

[37] During Pompeo's campaign, its affiliated Twitter account praised as a "good read" a news article that called Goyle, his Indian-American opponent, a "turban topper" who "could be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist etc.

[56] In August 2017, Pompeo took direct command of the Counterintelligence Mission Center, the department which had helped to launch an investigation into possible links between Trump associates and Russian officials.

[69][73] International relations scholars Daniel Drezner, Richard Sokolsky, and Aaron David Miller described Pompeo as the worst secretary of state in American history, citing numerous foreign policy failures, fealty to Trump at the cost of U.S. national interest, and improprieties in office.

[83] In March 2019, when questioned regarding Israel's conflicts with Iran and following a visit to the Western Wall with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo spoke to "the work that our administration's done to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains ...

"[84] On November 16, 2018, a CIA assessment was leaked to the media,[85] that concluded with "high confidence" Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered the October 2, 2018, assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

[86] Under mounting pressure from lawmakers who wanted action against Saudi Arabia, Pompeo disputed the CIA's conclusion and declared there was no direct evidence linking the Crown Prince to the Khashoggi's assassination.

According to a Kremlin aide, they discussed Syria, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START); Pompeo said he brought up—and Putin again denied—Russian election interference.

[104] After four-term U.S. senator Pat Roberts of Kansas announced that he would not seek re-election in the 2020 election, Pompeo considered leaving the Trump administration to run for the seat.

[108] On August 27, 2020, Pompeo, after visiting Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tarik Al-Said, concluded a Middle East trip aimed at encouraging Arab countries to follow the UAE's move.

While Pompeo had publicly supported Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, internal State Department discussions concluded that protecting Wong could risk retaliation from Beijing and compromise broader U.S. interests in the region.

[110][111][112][113] During a January 2024 House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party hearing titled "Authoritarian Alignment: The CCP's Support for America's Adversaries,"[114] in response to a question from Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi about whether he was "personally in favor of" Wong receiving refuge at the time, Pompeo said: "I don't want to talk about the discussions we had inside.

"[115] From the time he took office in April 2018 until spring 2020, Pompeo had hosted about two dozen taxpayer-funded "Madison dinners" at the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the State Department's headquarters) for hundreds of elite attendees.

[117] Records obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in 2021 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit revealed that the dinners had cost almost $65,000, including more than $10,000 for custom-engraved, Chinese-made pens given as gifts to the attendees.

These threats were to used to distract from the US´s failure to hold to account perpetrators of torture and other mistreatment in CIA "black sites" throughout Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania where the ICC had the authority to investigate.

"[129][132] The inspector general had also investigated Pompeo's role in the Trump administration's decision to declare an "emergency" to bypass a congressional freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

"[138] William B. Taylor Jr., acting ambassador to Ukraine and one of several current and former State Department officials appearing before congressional investigators, testified on October 22, 2019, that the White House was withholding military aid to Ukraine to force cooperation on U.S. domestic political issues, that Rudy Giuliani was running a shadow foreign policy effort parallel to official lines in the State Department, that when John Bolton and others fought the "effort to hijack" the U.S. relationship with Ukraine, Pompeo failed to respond directly to complaints, leaving Taylor to conclude that lack of timely, congressionally approved military aid would leave Ukrainians dying at the hands of Russian-led forces.

[140] An October 23, 2019, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the liberal watchdog group American Oversight persuaded a federal judge to give the State Department 30 days to release Ukraine-related records, including communications between Pompeo and President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

On November 22, the State Department released internal emails and documents bolstering Sondland's congressional testimony that Pompeo had participated in Giuliani's activities relating to Ukraine.

[152][153] In May 2019, Pompeo announced an "emergency" to push through $8.1 billion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing Iranian activity in the Middle East.

[154] The firing was scrutinized by Congress, and in June 2020, Linick testified that Brian Bulatao, a senior State Department appointee and Pompeo ally, attempted to "bully" and improperly pressure him into halting the investigation.

[154] A week later, OIG issued a report following the investigation into emergency arms sales; the report found that Pompeo did not violate any procedures in declaring the "emergency" but also determined that the State Department had failed to fully consider the humanitarian impact of the arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including the Gulf Arab states' use of U.S. bombs in Yemen, killing thousands of civilians.

[172] On January 19, 2021, Pompeo announced that the Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

[196] In 2016 Pompeo stated, "Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database.

In an April 2017 speech addressing the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service" and described Assange as a "narcissist" and "a fraud—a coward hiding behind a screen".

[209] In March 2014, he denounced the inclusion of a telecast by Edward Snowden at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, and asked that it be cancelled, predicting it would encourage "lawless behavior" among attendees.

"[218] In September 2018, Pompeo "backed continued U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen over the objections of staff members after being warned that a cutoff could jeopardize $2 billion in weapons sales to America's Gulf allies, according to a classified memo and people familiar with the decision".

[236][237] During his confirmation hearing, Pompeo said Russia "has reasserted itself aggressively, invading and occupying Ukraine, threatening Europe, and doing nearly nothing to aid in the destruction and defeat of ISIS".

He refused to sign on to a joint statement addressing the need for protection of the Arctic region from the threat of rapidly melting ice unless all mentions of climate change were removed from the document.