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The U.S. Justice Department declined to investigate or prosecute then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao after the inspector general\u2019s office referred allegations of potential misuse of office for review, a report made public on Wednesday said.<\/p>\n
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The report included allegations that Chao directed staff to research or purchase personal items for her online using her personal credit card or performed other personal errands for her or her father.<\/p>\n
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The report focused largely on Chao\u2019s actions related to her family\u2019s shipping business, the Foremost Group, which was founded by her father and whose current chief executive is her sister.<\/p>\n
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The report confirmed Chao made extensive plans to include family members in events during a planned, but later canceled, official trip to China in November 2017 that included intended stops at schools that received support from her family\u2019s business.<\/p>\n
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The report also said Chao had tasked political appointees to contact Homeland Security (DHS) officials on behalf of a foreign student who was the recipient of Chao family philanthropy.<\/p>\n
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The report also found DOT staff \u201cprovided various media and public affairs support\u201d to Chao\u2019s father in 2017 and 2018, including facilitating the booking of a private Amtrak car for Chao\u2019s father and guests to travel from New York to Washington for a DOT event.<\/p>\n
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In December during the final weeks of the Trump administration, the inspector general\u2019s office referred its findings to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Columbia for criminal prosecution, which declined to open a criminal investigation, as did the Justice Department\u2019s Public Integrity section.<\/p>\n
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The inspector general\u2019s report added prosecutors said \u201cthere may be ethical and\/or administrative issues to address but there is not predication to open a criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The report said the inspector general\u2019s \u201cpreliminary review revealed other potential misuses of position that warranted additional review.\u201d<\/p>\n
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House Transportation and Infrastructure chairman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat who sought the probe in 2019 said he was \u201cdisappointed that the Department of Justice declined to further pursue the matters that the IG\u2019s office substantiated in its investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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House Oversight and Government Reform Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said the report and documents obtained by the panel show \u201cChao used her official position and taxpayer resources for the benefit of herself and her family.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The report found no basis to open formal investigations into allegations she steered grant funds to Kentucky, the state represented by her husband Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. An analysis by the inspector general found that Kentucky \u201cdid not receive a disproportionate amount of DOT grant funds as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The report also found no basis to investigate Chao\u2019s holdings in Vulcan Materials, a large stone and asphalt producer that has received federal grants. She previously served as a director at Vulcan.<\/p>\n
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A spokesman for Chao said the report \u201cexonerates the secretary from baseless accusations and closes the book on an election-year effort to impugn her.\u201d<\/p>\n
maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Justice Department declined to investigate or prosecute then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao after the inspector general\u2019s office referred allegations of potential misuse of office for review, a report made public on Wednesday said. The report included allegations that Chao directed staff to research or purchase personal items for her online using her personal credit …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[13,14364,1393,11404,5307,137,6464],"class_list":["post-26030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-business","tag-chao","tag-dot","tag-elaine","tag-family","tag-report","tag-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/26031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}