The State Department did not fully consider the risk of civilian casualties when it approved more than $8 billion in arms sales to Middle Eastern countries last year, according to an inspector general report
The report has been heavily anticipated in part because Pompeo recently engineered the firing of Steve Linick, the inspector general under whom the investigation began. Linick also was looking into whether Pompeo and his wife, Susan, had improperly used State Department resources for personal reasons, a probe that remains underway.
Pompeo resisted sitting down for an interview for the report on the arms sales, one reason its release was delayed for so long. He instead answered questions in writing. The department also demanded an array of redactions, some of which are sure to receive scrutiny on Capitol Hill. A congressional aide told POLITICO that lawmakers want to make sure that the department didn't classify portions merely to cover up embarrassing actions.
The department's effort to pre-spin the report's findings before it was released infuriated leading Democrats. House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel compared it to Attorney General Bill Barr's efforts to put an early spin on the findings of then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia election interference investigation.
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