The US Department of State has moved to investigate the fate of a pricey gift that Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State under the Trump administration, was allegedly given by the Japanese government back in 2019, The New York Times, reports citing “two people briefed on the inquiry and a document made public on Wednesday”.
According to the newspaper, on the day that Japanese official gave said gift, a bottle of whiskey, to the State Department, Pompeo was actually travelling in Saudi Arabia, so it wasn’t immediately clear whether he actually received the item.
Also, the bottle was reportedly appraised at $5,800, and US officials apparently can't keep gifts that cost less than $390 – if the price is greater than that, then they would have to purchase those gifts to keep them.
The newspaper points out that the State Department “took the unusual step of noting that the whereabouts of the whiskey is unknown”.
"The department is looking into the matter and has an ongoing inquiry," a department filing said, with the NYT stating that "similar filings over the past two decades make no mention of any similar investigations".
Pompeo’s lawyer William A. Burck also announced that his client "has no idea what the disposition was of this bottle of whiskey."
News of this development left a number of social media users seemingly amused.
Some of them also speculated about what might have had happened to that bottle.