Chao and McConnell's potential conflict of interest

[struggle4progress]

By Li Zhouli
Jun 11, 2019, 7:50am EDT

While referencing infrastructure projects this past April, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a seemingly charming quip about his personal life. “My roommate has been involved in this issue for a couple of years,” he said, when asked about a potential funding package to overhaul the country’s crumbling roads and bridges. The “roommate” he’s referring to is, of course, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who also happens to be his wife.

Although this reference was intended as a joke in his April remarks, a recent Politico story casts the effect of their personal ties in a potentially more nefarious light.

The report, from Tucker Doherty and Tanya Snyder, notes that Chao has overseen the allocation of nearly $80 million in federal grants to Kentucky during her time as transportation secretary, designating a special intermediary to help the state navigate this funding process, a resource that few states have. It raises questions about whether Chao — who oversees funding for everything from highway construction to port development at the Department of Transportation — was treating Kentucky differently due to her relationship with McConnell ...

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/11/18659681/elaine-chao-mitch-mcconnell-transportation-secretary-trump-pruitt-zinke-price

[struggle4progress]

1. Chao created special path for McConnell's favored projects

By TUCKER DOHERTY and TANYA SNYDER
06/10/2019 05:02 AM EDT

The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

Beginning in April 2017, Inman and Chao met annually with a delegation from Owensboro, Ky., a river port with long connections to McConnell, including a plaza named in his honor. At the meetings, according to participants, the secretary and the local officials discussed two projects of special importance to the river city of 59,809 people — a plan to upgrade road connections to a commercial riverport and a proposal to expedite reclassifying a local parkway as an Interstate spur, a move that could persuade private businesses to locate in Owensboro ...

The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist ...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/mcconnell-elaine-chao-1358068

[struggle4progress]

2. Spotlight on Elaine Chao after public appearances with family members

By Curt Devine and Drew Griffin, Yong Xiong and Lily Lee, CNN
Updated 7:10 PM ET, Mon June 17, 2019

(CNN)Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao's public appearances with her family members who run an international shipping company have drawn condemnation from government watchdogs and House Democrats who argue Chao appears to have used her office to benefit her family.

The criticism has largely focused on the way in which Chao has associated her government office and title with her father, James S.C. Chao, the founder of the Foremost Group, a US-based shipping company with business ties to China.

During her time in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao has sat with her father for Chinese-language media interviews, appeared with him at an award ceremony and at a photoshoot listed on her schedule with him and other Foremost Group employees at the media center of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the US shipping industry ...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/politics/elaine-chao-family-members-invs/index.html

[benld74]

3. Potential? Funny

[Liberal In Texas]

4. Beat me to it. I think the same. n/t