Washington, DC — Lana Marks, the fashion hand-bag designer who was appointed ambassador to South Africa by President Trump, is facing scrutiny for seeking a prominent role at the embassy for her son Martin. Two senior members of Congress are pressing the State Department to answer questions about the Ambassador's actions.
"We are writing in regard to reports of concerning management and ethics practices at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria," the ranking members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in a letter on February 5 to Under Secretary of State David Hale, who manages day-to-day operations for the Department. Committee Chair Eliot Engel, and top Republican Michael McCaul decried the Department's failure to respond to requests for information. The letter was first reported February 7 by Foreign Policy.
According to a February 5 story by Foreign Policy, Marks forced the departure of the top career official at the embassy, David Young, and sought to make her son the chief of staff. An embassy official labelled that report "totally false", Foreign Policy's Robbie Gramer said in his story.
After the story appeared, Marks issued a statement calling Young "a wonderful man". She added: "Our management styles were quite different, and with his experience and ambition, I felt it far more appropriate for him to be in a chargé [d'affaires] position, which I arranged for him and was told was imminent."
The full text of the Engels-McCaul letter to Hale follows.
We are writing in regard to reports of concerning management and ethics practices at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa under Ambassador Lana Marks. As you know, conducting oversight on such matters has been a top priority for the Foreign Affairs Committee, and our bipartisan staff have been seeking answers to questions about these concerns since November 2019. Unfortunately, we have not received timely and complete responses these inquiries. We understand that our counterparts in the Senate have similarly faced challenges in getting information necessary to evaluate these concerns.
The Committee's concerns originated on November 8, 2019, when Ambassador Marks referred to her son, Martin Marks, as her chief of staff via Twitter. On November 12, Committee staff sent email queries to the Department for clarity on Ambassador Marks' tweet, Mr. Marks' role in Pretoria and any U.S. government resources afforded to him, and related matters. On November 18, the Department furnished initial responses to some of the Committee's questions but left many unaddressed.
In early December, we learned that the assignment of the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at Embassy Pretoria, a senior official who had only recently arrived in South Africa, had abruptly been curtailed. Committee staff emailed the Department on December 10, January 22, and January 23 asking for the reasons for the DCM's premature departure and whether it was at all directed or influenced by Ambassador Marks.
On January 24, the Department provided a response to Committee questions-some of which had been outstanding for more than six weeks-but it was incomplete and failed to address many aspects of our queries.
Consequently, on January 27, 28, and 29, Committee staff requested briefings with the former DCM, and separately, with representatives from the Bureau of African Affairs, Office of the Legal Adviser, and Undersecretary for Management who had traveled to Embassy Pretoria in late January reportedly to look into management and ethics practices at post. To date, we have also not received a response to these briefing requests.
These developments have impeded the Committee's understanding of an ambassador's management and ethics practices at one of the most important and complex U.S. missions on the African continent. As such, to further the Committee's constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the State Department and U.S. missions abroad, I request that you provide the items below no later than Wednesday, February 12, 2020.
• A date in February for a briefing with the recently curtailed DCM at Embassy Pretoria;
• A date in February for a briefing with members of the Bureau of African Affairs, Office of the Legal Adviser, and Undersecretary for Management team that visited Embassy Pretoria in January 2020; and
• Dates in February for briefings with any other Embassy Pretoria employees dismissed or curtailed between November 2019 and the present.
We hope and trust that the Department will make these individuals available in a timely manner without requiring further high-level engagement, and we look forward to hearing from you.
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