Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to deliver remarks about international religious liberty at a conservative confab in Washington this week. As Politico reported Tuesday, Pompeo is slated to appear at the Value Voter Summit, an annual gathering of religious, conservative political activists. The conference is hosted by FRC Action, a political action committee affiliated with the the Family Research Council, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that promotes conservative Christian policies.
“While the schedule indicates that Pompeo will be part of a discussion on international religious liberty—an issue that Congress has mandated the State Department champion—Pompeo is still walking a fine line just by showing up, former and current U.S. officials say,” writes the Politico reporter, Nahal Toosi, who also asserts that Pompeo’s appearance could be “potentially fraught given the event is likely to help galvanize Republicans ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.”
But the State Department is pushing back on the idea that Pompeo’s appearance, which a source at Foggy Bottom is characterizing as a foreign policy speech, is intended to be political or partisan. “If speaking about protecting human rights and liberty, including highlighting the persecution of Christians, Jews, Uighurs, Muslims, and other religious minorities around the world is considered wrong or offensive, then we as a nation have truly lost our way,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert in a statement.
Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas who served three terms in Congress, has spoken previously to the group when he was a member of the House. His participation in this year’s summit was vetted and approved by the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser, according to a senior official at the department.
Among the former officials who expressed concern about Pompeo’s appearance is Philippe Reines, who was a top aide to Hillary Clinton when she ran the State Department during Barack Obama’s first term. According to Politico, Reines “argued that Pompeo could use less politically loaded venues to discuss religious liberty.” He also claimed that when Clinton was at State, she “took pains to adhere to rules and norms about where she could go as America’s top diplomat” and avoided political events, including the 2012 Democratic National Convention. “We hewed to it religiously,” Reines said of their no-politics rule.
But is that really the case? “Hillary Clinton spoke to liberal groups on the other side, like Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress,” said one GOP operative. “To say that those aren’t political organizations doesn’t pass the smell test.”
In October 2011, for example, Clinton delivered remarks on “American global leadership” at a conference hosted by the Center for American Progress, a liberal 501(c)(3) that, like the FRC, has an affiliated PAC, the CAP Action Fund. CAP was founded by former Bill Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, who would go on to run Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign. The secretary of State was not shy about praising her hosts during that address.
“It is wonderful to be here with a lot of familiar faces,” Clinton said. “And it’s also good to see some new ones here on behalf of CAP and the values and ideals that it advocates for and protects and defends. And I want to thank my longtime friend, John Podesta, along with Neera Tanden, and everyone at the Center for American Progress, because this organization has grown dramatically. I remember when CAP was literally just a twinkle in John Podesta’s eye. And now, every day, you’re contributing to our national debate, and increasingly, the global debate.”
And two years earlier, just a few weeks after being sworn in as secretary of state, Clinton accepted the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood at the pro-abortion non-profit’s gala during its 2009 annual meeting in Houston. In her speech there, Clinton said the work of Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, “here in the United States and certainly across our globe is not done.” Planned Parenthood, like CAP and FRC, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with its own affiliated PAC, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Pompeo is scheduled to deliver his speech at the Values Voter Summit this Friday.
