Pompeo, a former congressman, aspired to run for the Senate and sought Trump's approval. He aimed to please Trump by turning the State Department into an arm of the president’s reelection campaign, causing immeasurable damage to American foreign policy.
In the late 1990s, after a stint as a Washington lawyer, where he and three former West Point classmates started an aircraft company, which was funded in good part by the Koch brothers. The business ultimately failed (again, contrary to Pompeo’s later claims), but he used his Koch connection to run for Congress as a Republican candidate affiliated with the then-burgeoning tea party movement. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Pompeo supported Marco Rubio and railed against Trump during the Kansas primary. When Trump won the nomination, Pompeo came around, as did most of the other candidates. A four-term congressman by this point, he had recently raised his profile by hammering Hillary Clinton in the House hearings on Benghazi.