Moscow Mitch

[Kid Berwyn]

19. He probably wouldn't even notice a change.

Guy’s wife is loaded and connected.

Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao

What Is Still Happening: Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and who previously served as George W. Bush’s labor secretary, faced back-to-back-to-back-to-back scandals this summer with a series of pieces about her and her husband’s various public grafts.

First, at the end of May, the Wall Street Journal published a report that Chao had failed to divest her shares in a crushed stone, sand, and gravel company, which supplied construction materials to the transportation sector, a year after she had promised to do so. In the meantime, she had netted more than $40,000. (She has reportedly divested since the report came out.)

A few days later, in early June, the New York Times published a 5,500-word feature on her family’s shipping company, its deep ties to the government of China, the money it has provided Chao and her husband and his campaigns, and Chao’s apparent efforts to use her positions to bolster the business. Among the highlights of that piece: Chao repeatedly sought to include family members and relatives affiliated with the company in meetings with top Chinese officials during overseas trips (this was reportedly stymied by State Department officials); in a response to a Senate confirmation questionnaire, Chao failed to list multiple honorary awards, titles, and appointments she had received in China; her agency has proposed U.S. maritime program budget cuts that would hurt competitors of her family’s business; she took at least 21 meetings or interviews with Chinese-language media in her first year in office, including multiple appearances with her father, the company’s former chairman; she attended an event celebrating a company deal that involved transit projects that fell under her oversight; she did not recuse herself from any decisions affecting the shipping industry. The Times also reported that 13 members of Chao’s family had given $1.1 million to McConnell’s campaigns and political action committees tied to him between 1989 and 2018. The paper noted that Chao’s father had given the couple a gift of between $5 million and $25 million in 2008 that catapulted McConnell to become the 10th wealthiest senator.

One week after the Times story, Politico reported on Chao’s apparent efforts to boost her husband’s political career through favorable Department of Transportation treatment for McConnell-friendly Kentucky communities. Among the highlights of that piece: Chao had an aide on her payroll specifically working as an intermediary to McConnell’s office and dedicated to Kentucky transportation projects; Owensboro, the Kentucky community where the special adviser was from, received an $11.5 million federal grant for a highway-widening project after it was rejected by the previous administration; days before launching his 2020 Senate campaign, McConnell held an event in Owensboro touting his work for the community; after Chao met with a top county official, her department approved “a $67 million discretionary grant to upgrade roads in rural Boone County, another McConnell stronghold northeast of Louisville.”

Finally, two weeks after the Politico report, in late June, Yahoo News reported how a separate McConnell stronghold, the town of Paducah, had benefited from Chao’s largesse. Members of the community of 25,000 had donated $331,029.50 to McConnell’s reelection campaign in 2013 and 2014, contributing at three times the rate of Louisville’s residents and eight times the rate of Lexington’s. Meanwhile: A local marine transportation equipment company received $377,000 from Chao’s DOT in 2017 to boost the town’s dry dock capabilities; Chao helped kill an administration proposal that would have ended a subsidy for small rural airports like Paducah’s; last year, Chao opened a Maritime Administration office in Paducah; and Chao’s department offered a $251,927 grant to the town for maritime highway projects.

Continues...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/elaine-chao-trump-corruption-still-happening.html

Cocaine Mitch was an official line of merchandise for nothing.