America’s Big New Mystery Is the Case of Mike Pompeo’s Missing $5,800 Whiskey Bottle

Josh FeldmanAug 4th, 2021, 4:00 pm
 
Mike Pompeo

NICHOLAS KAMM/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Call Nancy Drew and/or the Hardy Boys, because the State Department is trying to crack the case of a missing $5,800 bottle of whiskey.

According to The New York Times, the Japanese government gave former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the expensive whiskey as a gift in 2019. But, uh, the State Department apparently doesn’t know what happened to it.

It was unclear whether Mr. Pompeo ever received the gift, as he was traveling in Saudi Arabia on June 24, 2019, the day that Japanese officials gave it to the State Department, according to a department filing on Wednesday in the Federal Register documenting gifts that senior American officials received in 2019. Such officials are often insulated by staff members who receive gifts and messages for them.

American officials can keep gifts that are less than $390. But if the officials want to keep gifts that are over that price, they must purchase them. According to the filing, the State Department said the bottle was appraised at $5,800.

Pompeo has denied knowledge of what happened to the whiskey. The Times report says this is the “latest issue to arise about how the State Department operated under Mr. Pompeo.”

The lawyer for the former Secretary of State said, “He has no idea what the disposition was of this bottle of whiskey.”

There is an ongoing inquiry into the matter, but will we ever learn the fate of the whiskey bottle? Only time will tell, and Twitter is already on the case.

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Josh Feldman - Senior Editor

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac