New Report Claims Dozens Of Items Went Missing From State Department’s Vault During Transition From The Trump To Biden Administrations


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News broke that the State Department is reportedly looking into the whereabouts of a costly bottle of whiskey given to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by Japan. Still, there’s more to that story. It’s not just the $5,800 bottle of whiskey; at least 20 types of individual pieces are missing, and the State Department’s inspector general what’s to know what happened to them, according to Politico.

“At least 20 types of items (meaning dozens, possibly hundreds of individual pieces) vanished from the State Department’s gift vault as the Trump administration gave way to the Biden presidency, two U.S. officials familiar with the issue tell our own Nahal Toosi,” the outlet reports.

“The State Department inspector general is investigating what happened to the gifts — including, infamously, a $5,800 bottle of Japanese whiskey,” the report continues. “The IG’s office declined to comment.”

“While the whiskey was a gift from Japan’s government, most of the missing items are gifts the U.S. was intending to give other countries,” the report adds. “Many bore Donald Trump’s insignia, the U.S. officials said.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the investigation into the missing whiskey bottle on Fox News this week and appeared to throw the State Department under the bus. Pompeo said, “I have no idea how the State Department lost this thing, although I saw enormous incompetence at the State Department.”

U.S. officials can receive gifts less than $390, but they are absolutely forbidden to keep gifts over that price. In that case, they must purchase them.

And per the Constitution — that’s something the Trump administration should have paid more attention to — it is absolutely illegal for an American official to accept a gift from a foreign government, and gifts are considered property of the U.S. government. The reason that was added to the Constitution by the founders is so that foreign governments could not gain undue influence over American officials. Any officials caught accepting such gifts can face civil penalties or impeachment if they are still in office.

The previous administration appeared to think that rules and laws didn’t apply to them. We’ll see how that worked out for them in the end.

Featured image via Michael Vadon/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0

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