Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Ah, Mike Pompeo. Back in the news for his stage-setting role in the run-up to Afghanistan’s fall. Accountability could be coming, but as questions mount, don’t forget last week’s revelation that the State Department is investigating the disappearance of a $5,800 whisky bottle gifted to him by the Japanese government, with watchdogs wondering whether he or his staff is hiding or hiccuping something. Time will tell. Pompeo says he has no recollection of the bottle and no knowledge of its whereabouts.

As the New York Times underscored, officials are not allowed to keep gifts valued above $390: “Under the Constitution, it is illegal for an American official to accept a gift from a foreign government, and gifts are considered property of the U.S. government.”

As Fred Kaplan over at Slate called it back in January, Pompeo is “the worst secretary of state” in history, or second to ​​John Foster Dulles, the disgraced diplomat who’d offered France two nuclear weapons to use in Vietnam. But apparently the bar does get lower: Pompeo shrugged off the whisky’s whereabouts by saying, “I have no idea where this thing [is]…I wouldn’t know the difference between a $58 bottle and a $5,800 bottle…Had it been a case of Diet Coke, I’d have been all over it.”

There you have it. The nation’s former top diplomat would gladly throw back $5,800 in gifted Diet Cokes without reporting that either. Yes, this week’s “good news” bar has scraped the floor. There’s your recharge. (And you did notice that “whisky” forgoes “e” in Japan, Scotland, India, and many countries other than the United States and Ireland.)

Share your good news, not about Mike Pompeo, at recharge@motherjones.com.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate