Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Hillary Clinton for job advice, even though he once said her response to Benghazi was worse than Watergate
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Hillary Clinton for job advice in March of 2018 even after slamming her handling of the Benghazi attacks and cheering the hack of her emails in 2016, The New York Times reported.
- Pompeo served on the House Select Committee on Benghazi which investigated the 2012 terrorist attacks.
- At the time, he called Clinton's response to the tragedy "morally reprehensible" and continuing to fault her for the attacks even after the committee cleared her of any intentional wrongdoing.
- Pompeo and Clinton seem to have put their rocky past behind them, with Pompeo reportedly thanking Clinton for her "noble service to our country" during the conversation.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Hillary Clinton for advice on how to lead the State Department, according to a new report, despite a history of criticizing Clinton.
According to a profile published Tuesday by The New York Times, Pompeo reached out to all the living former secretaries of state in March of 2018, including Clinton, who served in the position from 2009 to 2013.
But in the years prior, Pompeo and Clinton clashed repeatedly over the October 2012 attacks on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya.
As a Republican representative for Kansas, Pompeo served on the House Select Committee on Benghazi which investigated the attacks and grilled Clinton about the State Department's response.
At the time, Pompeo called Clinton's response to Benghazi, including the handling of emails related to the attacks, "morally reprehensible," and "worse, in some ways" than President Richard Nixon's handling of the Watergate scandal.
While the select committee produced a report in 2016 that ultimately cleared Clinton of any personal wrongdoing, Pompeo and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio attached their own memo to the report which included more pointed criticism of Clinton.
Despite the clashes, Pompeo and Clinton seemed to have put their contentious past behind them. Pompeo said Clinton was "most gracious" during their conversation, according to the Times.
"I am all about moving forward," Pompeo told the Times.
A source with familiar with the conversation also told the the Times that Pompeo thanked Clinton for her "noble service to our country."
In addition to the Benghazi disagreement, Pompeo also promoted an article about the hacking of the Democratic National Convention's and the Clinton campaign's emails in 2016 by radical transparency group WikiLeaks, which he later denounced as a "hostile non-state intelligence service" when he became director of the CIA.
"Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down?" Pompeo tweeted. "BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by Wikileaks."
Pompeo joined President Donald Trump's administration in January of 2017 as CIA director before taking the Secretary of State job in April 2018. Pompeo is one of the few senior administration officials who have been with Trump since the beginning of his presidency.