https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...emoval-of-acting-dot-inspector-general-268611 Democrats blast removal of acting DOT inspector general The letters from House Democrats come as Behm was pushed out of the job one day after Trump fired the State Department inspector general. Rep. Peter DeFazio and two other senior House Democrats on Tuesday demanded that the Trump administration reinstate Mitchell Behm, who had been the acting Transportation Department inspector general until he was ousted from the position over the weekend and replaced with the head of another agency. Behm, a longtime deputy inspector general who had been acting in the lead position since Calvin Scovell retired in January, was replaced Saturday by Skip Elliott, who is also administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. In two letters, one addressed to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and one to Elliott, the chairs of the House Oversight and Transportation committees protested Behm's removal, saying it's the "latest in a series of politically motivated firings of Inspectors General" and calling Behm a devoted public servant. Behm, who is not a political appointee, was pushed out of the job one day after Trump fired the State Department inspector general, a move which is now under investigation by House Democrats. In a statement, DOT said that the letter is "not factual," because Behm was never designated acting IG and therefore was not removed or fired from any post. "He continues to serve in his long-time role as Deputy Inspector General," a DOT spokesperson said. But several documents, including Behm's own bio on the DOT website and a recent press release naming him to a pandemic oversight task force, refer to him as the acting IG for the agency. The letter also alleges that Behm’s removal could be “an effort to undermine” the progress of an investigation into Chao's possible conflicts of interest, following reports that her agency may have given preferential treatment to Kentucky, represented in the Senate by her husband Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Any attempt by you or your office to interfere with the Office of Inspector General’s investigation of yourself is illegal and will be thoroughly examined by our Committees,” they wrote. The Democrats also warned that Elliott's simultaneous positions could create conflicts of interest, chilling whistleblower disclosures to the IG's office, as well as communication within that office, because employees may be concerned that Elliott, as the head of one of DOT's subagencies, would share information with Chao. "This inherent conflict of interest would prohibit you from having the independence necessary to conduct fair and rigorous oversight of the Department and the Secretary,” they wrote. DOT said that Elliott is expected to recuse himself from investigations into or audits of PHMSA. The letter asks for information about ongoing investigations and audits, as well as communications about Behm's removal and Elliott's qualifications for the job. Also on Friday, the Trump administration had indicated that it would nominate Eric Soskin, a Justice Department lawyer who defended the administration in several high-profile recent cases, to be the next permanent DOT IG. Behm has worked for the IG's office since 2003, initially joining as a financial expert.
Good. Keep draining the swamp. I saw a clip earlier today wherein some reported asked Joe if he would commit to never firing an inspector general if elected. Naturally, Joe being a chump walked right into it and said absolutely. So then the reporter askes him "what about President Obama who fired the Americorps inspector general because he was investigating one of Obama's campaign contributors." So then, Joe says "I don't remember that." womp....womp...womp. Funny shiite, the chump walked right into the hole that the reported dug for him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/politics/elaine-chao-inspector-general-report.html Inspector General’s Report Cites Elaine Chao for Using Office to Help Family The Justice Department under the Trump administration declined to open a criminal investigation into the actions by Ms. Chao when she was transportation secretary. 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. Ms. Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced her resignation on Jan. 7, the day after the Capitol riot. At the time of her departure, an aide to Ms. Chao said her resignation was unrelated to the inspector general’s investigation. The investigation of Ms. 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, Ms. 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 in a letter accompanying a 44-page report detailing the investigation into “use of public office for private gain.” The investigators did not make a formal finding that Ms. Chao violated ethics rules. But they detailed more than a dozen instances where her office took steps to handle matters related to her father, who built up a New York-based shipping company after immigrating to the United States from Taiwan in the late 1950s, and to her sister, who runs the company now. These included an interview with a Chinese-language television station at the New York City headquarters of Foremost Group, the shipping company. The focus of the conversation there, according to a Transportation Department translation of the media plan prepared for the interview, was to discuss how Ms. Chao’s father, James Chao, had been “dubbed ‘Chinese Ship King,’ how Foremost Group ‘ascended to its status in the world,’ and Dr. Chao’s business endeavors.” Mr. Chao, 93, who was born in China, built a business that centered around transporting commodities like coal and iron ore to the Chinese market. Elaine Chao, his eldest daughter, who was raised in and around New York City, has been prominent in Republican politics for decades, including an eight-year term as labor secretary under President George W. Bush. Foremost Group was responsible as of 2019 for a large portion of orders at one of China’s biggest state-funded shipyards, and had secured long-term charters with a Chinese state-owned steel maker, The Times reported. 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 Ms. Chao said the report cleared her of any wrongdoing. “This report exonerates the secretary from baseless accusations and closes the book on an election-year effort to impugn her history-making career as the first Asian-American woman appointed to a president’s cabinet and her outstanding record as the longest tenured cabinet member since World War II,” the statement said. Ms. Chao had declined to respond to questions from the inspector general and instead provided a memo that detailed the importance of promoting her family as part of her official duties. “Anyone familiar with Asian culture knows it is a core value in Asian communities to express honor and filial respect toward one’s parents,” the September 2020 memo said. “Asian audiences welcome and respond positively to actions by the secretary that include her father in activities when appropriate,” it continued. Democrats seized on the report as further evidence of ethical problems throughout the Trump administration. “Public servants, especially those responsible for leading tens of thousands of other public servants, must know that they serve the public and not their family’s private commercial interests,” said Representative Peter DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which requested the investigation after the report in The Times. The investigators found that Ms. Chao had used her staff to arrange details for Mr. Chao’s trip to China in October 2017, including asking, through the State Department, for China’s Transport Ministry to arrange for two cars for a six-person delegation, which included Ms. Chao’s younger sister Angela Chao, who had succeeded their father as head of the family shipping company, and Angela Chao’s husband, the venture capitalist Jim Breyer. The trip had been scheduled to include stops at locations in China that had received financial support from the company and also a meeting with “top leaders” in China that was to include Elaine Chao’s father and sister, but not other members of Transportation Department staff. The trip was canceled just before Ms. Chao’s planned departure after ethics concerns were raised by officials at the State and Transportation Departments. The investigators also found that she repeatedly asked agency staff members to help do chores for her father, including editing his Wikipedia page and promoting his Chinese-language biography. They said she directed two staff members from her office to send a copy of Mr. Chao’s book “to a well-known C.E.O. of a major U.S. corporation” to ask if he would write a foreword for it. In one instance in 2017, staff members from Ms. Chao’s office were assigned to check with the Department of Homeland Security on the status of a work permit application for a foreign student studying in the United States who had received a scholarship from a Chao family foundation, the report said. The student, according to the report, had interviewed Mr. Chao at the New York headquarters of the family’s shipping company in order to share Mr. Chao’s experience “with Chinese millennials.” In 2018, Ms. Chao’s staff at the Transportation Department helped promote her father at events at Columbia University, SUNY Maritime College, Lloyd’s List, and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, according to the report. The report cited a media plan that a department staff member was asked to proofread: “We recommend amplifying the coverage in regional press a means to build Dr. Chao’s profile and to share the story of his journey.” On a separate occasion, a Foremost employee called the secretary’s office to help her father get an appointment of some kind — the specifics were blacked out in the report. “Secretary — I am more than happy to assist but just want to make sure you are okay with me handling this?” the aide wrote to Ms. Chao, the report said. The report said that none of the Transportation Department employees interviewed “described feeling ordered or coerced to perform personal or inappropriate tasks for the secretary.” In deciding not to take up a potential criminal case, the report said, the Justice Department notified the inspector general that “there may be ethical and/or administrative issues to address but there is not predication to open a criminal investigation.” Given the lack of “prosecutorial interest” from the Justice Department, the inspector general closed its own investigation but referred it to the Transportation Department general counsel “for any action it deems appropriate.”
Good. And any irregularities that are uncovered or have been investigated will will provide further strength to the arguments why the Biden Crime Family and Chinese connections should be fully investigated. Unless, one is going to argue that people are just picking on the Biden's for political purposes, which of course the lefty script requires its bootlickers to follow. Let's look at all White House/DC/Capitol Hill connections. Somehow, for example, we get this report on Mitch and Elaine but members of Congress cannot get a briefing or access to the investigation documents surrounding Eric Swallow-well and his Chinese girlfriend/spy. As we know, information flows freely in some areas and not so freely in others. The script says that "there is nothing to see there" with Swalwell and the dems take that to be enough and even members of congress cannot get a briefing on it. More to come. Lots of stuff on hunters laptop. There is not more to come from the government but there are other sources. Giddy-up. Let's go, Motherfucks. The Bidens are dirty - all of em- and a little bit of investigation goes a long way- on any of them.