前国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥根据国务院监察长办公室的说法，他的妻子苏珊违反了联邦政府的道德规则，要求工作人员提供个人帮助。

联邦监察机构已经对庞培进行了多年的调查，导致了激烈的对机构的批评来自前美国最高外交官和领先的共和党政治家。

在接受监督机构工作人员的采访时，他为自己和妻子的行为辩护，称他们要求一位“朋友”完成“小而简单”的任务，这位“朋友”是该部门的长期助手，负责大部分差事。

这份由美国广播公司新闻获得的报告记录了100多起迈克或苏珊·蓬佩奥指派助手和其他工作人员执行私人任务的事件，包括预订晚餐或沙龙预约、私人邮件圣诞节卡片，以及购买诸如鲜花或t恤之类的东西——这些细节是美国广播公司新闻在9月份首次报道的。

联邦道德标准和国务院自己的规定禁止要求下属进行个人恩惠或使用政府资源谋取私利，尽管庞培家族似乎没有违反任何法律。

安德鲁·卡瓦列罗-雷诺兹/法新社，通过盖蒂图像，文件

国务卿迈克·蓬佩奥和他的妻子苏珊·蓬佩奥抵达布莱斯·迪亚涅国际机场

该报告称:“尽管这些标准对于最大限度地降低任何主管与员工关系中的胁迫风险非常重要，但当主管是一个组织中最高级的官员时，遵守这些标准尤其重要，比如国务卿，他拥有相当大的权力和权威。”

随着蓬佩奥现已下台，他不太可能面临任何影响。

监察长办公室(即OIG)在2019年首次启动调查，此前收到一份举报投诉，称蓬佩奥“滥用美国国务院资源”，包括分配“个人性质”的任务。

在中心的是一位名叫托尼·波特的长期蓬佩奥助手，在报告中他没有被命名为“高级顾问”她于2018年5月被蓬佩奥聘为职员，但“几乎每天”他的妻子苏珊·波特都会分配任务，尽管苏珊·蓬佩奥不是联邦雇员。

除了波特，苏珊·蓬佩奥还向其他几名员工提出了要求，他们都告诉OIG，他们认为她交给他们的任务是按照秘书的指示来的，这意味着他们也有义务执行这些任务。

OIG发现，分配的任务“与该部门的公务没有明显的联系，因此，似乎不符合关于使用下属员工时间的道德行为标准”。

在这份长达26页的报告中记录的许多事件中，OIG报道称，波特为苏珊·蓬佩奥打印照片作为礼物，为朋友订购鲜花和一件t恤，在他们家里计划个人活动，并为政治相关的客人安排参观国务院和其他华盛顿网站。

波特还为庞培斯的狗提供护理，为苏珊·蓬佩奥预约沙龙，并帮助起草医学院推荐信。

OIG说，最常见的任务是预订餐厅(这种情况至少发生了30次)和购买活动门票，但鉴于国务卿的安全考虑，尚不清楚这是否违反了规定。

OIG说:“对于执行这些任务是否是对官方时间的适当利用，需要对员工进行进一步的法律指导。”。

它还要求该机构的法律顾问办公室正式决定使用联邦资金为庞培的朋友购买礼物。OIG说，在两个例子中，苏珊·蓬佩奥让波特用部门资金为庞培家族参加的晚宴购买礼物——这可能会进一步违反规定。

庞培的儿子尼克也遭遇了类似的黑暗事件。在西点军校(West Point，美国军事学院)与父亲一起观看足球比赛时，他以较低的价格购买了一家酒店，尽管他不是政府雇员。“这表明庞培家族可能是为他们的儿子争取酒店折扣的受益者，这违反了联邦道德规则，”OIG说。

庞培的律师威廉·伯克在本月早些时候写给OIG的一封信中驳回了该报告的草稿，该信是由美国广播公司获得的。

伯克写道:“报告草案充其量不过是起草者精心挑选的picayune投诉的汇编，目的是将无辜、例行甚至值得称赞的行为扭曲成邪恶的行为。”“最糟糕的是，它充斥着蓄意的错误陈述和半真半假的捏造，以支持起草者似乎出于政治动机的目标，即寻找蓬佩奥所谓的道德失误。"

伯克称波特为苏珊·蓬佩奥的“近30年的朋友”，分配给她的任务是“最小限度的互动”，用拉丁文法律术语来表示小事情。

但OIG不同意这种说法。“这种请求的数量之多，综合起来，表明国防部员工为了庞培家族的个人利益花费了大量时间，”OIG说——并补充说，尽管蓬佩奥认为这是一种个人恩惠，但波特告诉调查人员，她这样做“是因为她认为这是她的官方职责的一部分。”

它还记录了其他工作人员为庞培家族完成差事的例子，包括开车送一个朋友去拿晚餐和完成蓬佩奥家族的个人圣诞卡。

在接受OIG工作人员的采访时，迈克·蓬佩奥否认了上一次事件，即一名外交官员周末在信封、地址和邮寄圣诞卡的工作是一项“微小的任务”，并表示他向该部门报销了圣诞卡的费用。

然而，OIG说，这些工作人员“在执行这些任务时的非执勤时间”没有得到补偿。

Pompeos violated federal ethics rules in assigning staff 'personal' errands, watchdog finds

Former Secretary of StateMike Pompeoand his wife Susan violated the federal government's ethics rules by requesting staff carry out personal favors, according to the State Department inspector general's office.

The federal watchdog had been undertaking the investigation of the Pompeos for years, leading to fierycriticism of the agencyfrom the former top U.S. diplomat and leading Republican politician.

In an interview with the watchdog's staff, he defended his and his wife's actions as asking "small simple" tasks of a "friend," a longtime aide who worked in the department and carried out most errands.

The report, obtained by ABC News, documented over 100 instances of Mike or Susan Pompeo assigning that aide and other staffers personal errands, including booking dinner reservations or salon appointments, mailing personalChristmascards, and purchasing things such as flowers or a t-shirt -- some details that ABC News first reported in September.

Federal ethics standards and the State Department's own rules prohibit asking subordinates to conduct personal favors or use government resources for private gain, although the Pompeos don't appear to have violated any laws.

"While these standards are important to minimize the risk of coercion in any supervisor-employee relationship, compliance with them is especially critical when the supervisor is the senior-most official in an organization, like the Secretary of State, who is imbued with considerable power and authority," the report said.

With Pompeo now out of government, it's unlikely he'll face any repercussions.

The Office of the Inspector General, or OIG, first launched its investigation in 2019 after receiving a whistleblower complaint that Pompeo was "misusing U.S. Department of State resources," including by assigning tasks "of a personal nature."

At the center is a longtime Pompeo aide named Toni Porter, who is unnamed in the report as a "Senior Advisor." She was hired by Pompeo in May 2018 as a staffer, but "on an almost daily basis" his wife Susan assigned Porter tasks, even though Susan Pompeo was not a federal employee.

Beyond Porter, Susan Pompeo made requests of several other staffers, all of whom told the OIG they believed assignments from her came at the secretary's direction, meaning they were obliged to carry them out as well.

The tasks assigned "had no apparent connection to the official business of the Department and, thus, appear inconsistent with the Standards of Ethical Conduct regarding use of a subordinate employee's time," the OIG found.

Among the scores of incidents documented in the 26-page report, the OIG reported that Porter printed photos for Susan Pompeo to give as gifts, ordered flowers and a t-shirt for friends, planned personal events at their home, and arranged tours of the department and other Washington sites for politically-affiliated guests.

Porter also provided care for the Pompeos' dog, made salon appointments for Susan Pompeo, and help draft a medical school letter of recommendation.

The most common task was making restaurant reservations, which happened on at least 30 occasions, and purchasing event tickets, the OIG said, but it's unclear if that violated rules, given security concerns for the secretary of state.

"Further legal guidance to employees is warranted as to whether performing such tasks are an appropriate use of official time," the OIG said.

It also requested a formal determination by the agency's legal adviser's office on the use of federal money to purchase gifts for the Pompeos friends. In two instances, Susan Pompeo had Porter buy gifts using department funds for dinner parties the Pompeos were attending -- something that may further violate rules, the OIG said.

There is a similarly murky incident involving the Pompeos' son, Nick. He paid a reduced rate for a hotel when joining his father at West Point, the U.S. military academy, for a football game, even though he is not a government employee -- "suggest[ing] that the Pompeos may have been the beneficiaries of a solicitation of a hotel discount for their son, in violation of" federal ethics rules, the OIG said.

The Pompeos' lawyer, William Burck, dismissed a draft version of the report in a letter to the OIG earlier this month that was obtained by ABC News.

"At best, the Draft Report amounts to little more than a compilation of picayune complaints cherry-picked by the drafters in an effort to twist innocent, routine and even praise-worthy behavior into something nefarious," wrote Burck. "At its worst, it is rife with deliberate misstatements and half-truths concocted to support the drafters' seemingly politically motivated goal to find purported ethical lapses by Mr. Pompeo."

Burck called Porter Susan Pompeo's "friend of almost 30 years" and tasks assigned to her "de minimis interactions," using a Latin legal term for minor things.

But the OIG disagreed: "The sheer number of such requests, when aggregated, indicates that a non de minimis amount of time was expended by Department employees for the personal benefit of the Pompeos," the OIG said -- adding that while Pompeo cast it as a personal favor, Porter told investigators she did so "because she believed she had to as part of her official duties."

It also documented instances of other staffers completing errands for the Pompeos, including driving a friend to pick up dinner and completing the Pompeo family's personal Christmas card.

During an interview with OIG staff, Mike Pompeo dismissed that last incident, which involved a Foreign Service officer working over the weekend to envelope, address, and mail Christmas cards, as a "tiny task" and said he reimbursed the department the cost of the cards.

The staff were not reimbursed, however, for their "non-duty time when performing these tasks," the OIG said.