Susan Pompeo: Who Is Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo’s Wife?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to speak Tuesday during the Republican National Convention in a pre-recorded address that will be livestreamed, just like much of the convention. Though the spotlight will be on the statesman himself, any narrative about Mike Pompeo also includes his second wife, Susan, who has been by his side for two decades and has a level of influence in her husband’s job that could be seen as inappropriate by some analyses.

She Married Mike Pompeo In 2000

Back in the late 1990s, as The New Yorker reported, the newly divorced Mike Pompeo had just moved back to his home state of Kansas and planned to make his fortune in aerospace by buying companies that manufactured machinery for use in the industry.

During one of his meetings, he sat across the table from a bank’s vice president, a former Wichita State University homecoming queen named Susan Justice Mostrous. Three years later, in 2000, they were married, and Mike had adopted her son from her second marriage, Nicholas.

“She took my money twice,” he later joked.

Since then, she’s been by his side as he worked in the financing side of the aerospace and oil industries, through his early career in politics as the United States representative from Kansas’ 4th congressional district, on up to his appointment to the CIA, and later, to the secretary of state post.

Her Influence Over Her Husband’s Career Has Raised Questions

In a July 2020 profile, Politico noted that, in many ways, Mrs. Pompeo’s role in her husband’s career is not unlike that of other spouses of politicians and diplomats. She has acted, for example, as an internal liaison for her spouse, as well as a link to constituents back home in Kansas.

In other ways, however, her involvement is somewhat unprecedented, at least in the modern area. While previous spouses of secretaries of state — Bill Clinton, Teresa Kerry, Alma Powell — had taken limited roles in their spouses’ careers, Susan Pompeo has been more directly involved.

For example, she’s organized so-called Madison Dinners — gatherings of influential Washington figures and wealthy potential donors. Some have criticized those dinners as an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

A group of former House of Representatives staff members, speaking to the website on condition of anonymity, said that Mrs. Pompeo was “heavily involved” in matters related to her husband’s job, from managing his social calendar to weighing in on hiring decisions to selecting fonts. Several said that she ordered them around on personal errands.

Staffers also say that they were expected to be at the couple’s beck and call at all times; one said that they treated their diplomatic security agents as “UberEats with guns,” referring to the meal delivery service.

One man, Jakob Provo, had applied for a job on Pompeo’s team and believed that he’d nailed the interview — that is, until Susan reportedly had a chance to look over his cover letter. When she noticed a typographical error — supposedly a misplaced comma — she called him in for a second interview and, as he described it, questioned his “character and dedication.”

Mike Pompeo, for his part, issued a statement accusing Politico of attempting to smear his wife.

“Susan Pompeo has chosen to serve America in a multitude of ways over the past ten years for the betterment of me, my work teams, Kansas and America. POLITICO’s continued efforts to smear her are both sad and wrong. Instead of being slandered, she should be applauded and thanked,” he wrote.