Mike Pompeo’s Inspector General scandal just got even uglier for him

When Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo conspired to fire the State Department Inspector General, who was in the process of investigating Pompeo’s improprieties, it was a felony act of obstruction of justice. Pompeo apparently figures he’s already going to prison for the Ukraine scandal if Trump loses, so there’s no harm in committing some additional crimes in the name of trying to keep things from unraveling before election day.

But now the details are surfacing about just what the Inspector General was investigating Mike Pompeo for. NBC News says that Pompeo was forcing a government staffer to do things like walk his dog and make dinner reservations for him and his wife. This is a highly improper and abusive waste of taxpayer resources, but if this is all that the IG was investigating Pompeo for, then it wasn’t a criminal act. Yet Pompeo’s decision to oust the IG to stop this investigation is a criminal act.

That means Pompeo broke the law in the name of trying to prevent the public from learning that he was forcing a staffer to walk his dog, and as a direct result of this move, the public has learned about the dog walking incident much sooner than it would have otherwise surfaced. Trump and his goons are as stupidly incompetent as they are corruptly criminal.