BREAKING: Mike Pompeo Reportedly Hosted GOP Donors, Supreme Court Justices, and Fox News Hosts at Lavish, Taxpayer-Funded Private Dinners

Photo credit: Alastair Pike, AFP/Getty Images.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly hosted roughly two-dozen lavish, taxpayer-funded private functions since 2018, inviting billionaire CEOs, Republican donors, celebrities, and Fox News hosts to cocktails and dinners within the State Department.

According to a new report by NBC News, Pompeo and his wife, Susan Pompeo, advertised the elite functions as “Madison Dinners,” to evoke the fourth president James Madison’s tradition of inviting thinkers and leaders of the day for discussions. But the couple’s guest list had a distinct ideological tilt to the right, including well-known conservative donors as well as numerous members of Congress, all of whom were Republican. In addition, just one in seven of those invited were diplomats or foreign dignitaries, who are the typical attendees for official entertaining by the nation’s top diplomat.

“State Department officials,” NBC News reported, “involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo’s personal email address.”

These revelations about the secretary using State Department funds for opulent dinners with powerful people, many of whom have little foreign policy interest of expertise, raises even more scrutiny of his behavior in the wake of President Donald Trump abruptly firing the agency’s inspector general — who was investigating Pompeo — at Pompeo’s urging.

Among those hosted by Pompeo and his wife included numerous business titans, like Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy and Home Depot founder Ken Langone, well-known right-wing donors like Chik-fil-A Chairman Dan Cathy, conservative Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, GOP politicians like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Rep. Lee Zeldin (NY), celebrities such as country singer Reba McEntire and former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Fox News hosts like Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade and primetime host Laura Ingraham.

Details of the dinners portray an experience that mirrored an official state dinner at the White House.

“Guests arriving by car pull in to the horseshoe driveway of the Harry S. Truman Building, headquarters of U.S. diplomacy, where officials are waiting to greet and escort them to a special elevator reserved for the evening,” NBC News reported. A harpist was typically on hand for background music during the cocktail hour, during which an official photographer was also on hand for group photos. “As guests depart, usually around 9 p.m., they’re given a journal and a pen as gifts — both custom-embossed with the Madison dinner logos. The State Department special-ordered hundreds of each in 2018, the pens for $23.75 apiece and the journals for $8.”

And while cost estimates for the dinners themselves were not released to staffers working the events, NBC reports that the tab for the functions ran well north of $100,000. “Two sources with knowledge of the events and the underlying costs estimated that the bill probably runs several hundred dollars per plate, likely pushing the total cost of the dinners to date into the six figures.”