Mike Pompeo

Michael Richard Pompeo (/pɒmˈpeɪoʊ/; born December 30, 1963) is an American politician, attorney, diplomat, and former U.S. Army officer who served in the first administration of Donald Trump as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018, and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.

Pompeo was born in Orange, California. After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1986 and completing his obligatory five-year service as a U.S. Army officer, Pompeo went on to graduate from Harvard Law School. He worked as an attorney until 1998 and then became an entrepreneur in the aerospace and oilfield industries. Pompeo was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2010, representing Kansas's 4th congressional district until 2017. Although Pompeo criticized Donald Trump, whom he called "authoritarian" and "not a conservative believer", as a surrogate for the Marco Rubio campaign, Pompeo later endorsed Trump after he became the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election. Trump appointed him Director of the CIA in January 2017 and Secretary of State in April 2018.

As a politician, Pompeo has been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party and general secretary Xi Jinping whom he calls a "dictator"; he directed U.S.–China relations in opposition to China's policies regarding the oppression of Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. He was sanctioned by China immediately after leaving office. He advocated for moving U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

As CIA director, Pompeo invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent CIA officers from testifying in the trials regarding the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques. As secretary of state, Pompeo declared that the U.S.'s human rights policy should prioritize religious liberty and property rights. In relations with Israel, he oversaw the controversial moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel, and the end of recognition of Israeli settlement in the West Bank as a violation of international law. In other Middle East policy, he supervised the reduction of U.S. forces in Syria, and the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. He brokered the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and disputed the role of Mohammed bin Salman in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. He unsuccessfully negotiated to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program, at multiple summits of the 2017–2018 North Korea crisis.

He was among the staunchest Trump loyalists in the Cabinet and routinely flouted State Department norms in aid of Trump's objectives, including supporting Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and a 2020 Republican National Convention speech found to be in violation of the Hatch Act. In an Instagram post after his victory in the 2024 election, President Trump declared that he would "not be inviting Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley to join" his next administration.