Report ties Trump cabinet member to ethics issues
WASHINGTON — While serving as transportation secretary during the Trump administration, Elaine Chao repeatedly used her office staff to help family members who run a shipping business with extensive ties to China, a report released Wednesday by the Transportation Department’s inspector general concluded.
The inspector general referred the matter to the Justice
Department in December for possible criminal investigation. But in the weeks before the end of Trump administration, two Justice Department divisions declined to do so.
Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced her resignation on Jan. 7, the day after the Capitol riot.
The investigation of Chao came after a 2019 report in The New York Times that detailed her interactions with her family while serving as transportation secretary, including a trip she had planned to take to China in 2017 with her father and sister. The inspector general’s report confirmed that the planning for the trip, which was canceled, raised ethics concerns among other government officials.
As transportation secretary, Chao was the top Trump administration official overseeing the American shipping industry, which is in steep decline and is being battered by Chinese competitors.
“A formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted,” Mitch Behm, the Transportation Department’s deputy inspector general, said to House lawmakers on Tuesday, detailing the probe into “use of public office for private gain.”
The investigators detailed more than a dozen instances where her office took steps to handle matters related to her father, who built up a New Yorkbased shipping company after immigrating to the United States from Taiwan in the late 1950s, and to her sister, who runs the company now.
The Chao family’s American success story has vaulted the family to celebrity status in China, and the Chaos regularly meet with top officials on their trips to the country.
In a statement on Wednesday, a public relations firm representing Elaine Chao said the report cleared her of any wrongdoing.