A report released by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General says former DOT Secretary and Chinese-American Zhao Xiaolan used government resources on several occasions during her tenure to help her Family expand business with China.
In a 44-page report provided to Congress on Wednesday, the DOT inspector general said that in 2017, Chao arranged for her staff to make arrangements for her and her father and sister to visit China, according to a report published by The New York Times on Thursday (March 4). The travel plans were later canceled, but raised ethical concerns among other government officials, the report said.
The trip was planned to include stops at sites in China that were financially supported by her family’s company and meetings with China’s “top leaders. The meetings included her father and sister, but no one else from the Ministry of Transportation.
The report also details that Chao directed her staff to spend federal Time and resources on matters related to a Chinese shipbuilding company and her father.
Chao, a Taiwanese immigrant, is married to Senate Republican bigwig Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). She has served as secretary of labor and secretary of transportation for the U.S. federal government.
She was nominated by Trump as transportation secretary in 2016 and resigned on Jan. 7 of this year.
The New York Times said that as of 2019, the majority of orders for one of China’s largest state-owned shipbuilders are being fulfilled by Zhao’s family-owned company, Formosa Group ((Foremost Group), which also has a long-term charter with a Chinese state-owned steelmaker. Foremost’s ships carry bulk cargoes such as iron ore and coal, primarily transporting those commodities to China.
The DOT inspector general’s investigation detailed a series of instances in which Zhao Xiaolan directed her staff to spend federal time and resources on matters related to a shipbuilding company and her father.
The investigation found that she repeatedly asked department staff to do chores for her father, including editing his Wikipedia page, promoting his biography in Chinese, and instructing two staff members in the DOT’s office to send her father’s book “to a prominent CEO of a major U.S. company” and ask if he could write the foreword for it.
The report also cites an instance in which Chao’s office staff was assigned to verify with the Department of Homeland Security in 2017 the work permit application of a foreign student studying in the United States who had received a scholarship from the Chao family foundation.
The student had interviewed Zhao Xiaolan’s father, Zhao Xicheng, at the New York headquarters of the Zhao family shipping company in order to “share Zhao Xicheng’s experience with Chinese millennials,” according to the report.
While investigators did not formally charge Zhao Xiaolan with ethics violations, they cited more than a dozen instances in which her office appeared to handle matters related to her father, Zhao Xicheng. After immigrating to the United States, Zhao Xicheng set up a shipping company in New York that was later handed over to Zhao Xiaolan’s sister to manage.
A public relations firm commissioned by Zhao Xiaolan said in a statement Wednesday that the report (by the Transportation Department’s inspector general) showed no wrongdoing on her part.
The statement said, “This report clarifies the unfounded allegations against Secretary (Chao Xiaolan) and puts an end to all the election-year smear campaigns against the unprecedented career of the first Asian-American woman appointed to the president’s Cabinet and her outstanding record as the longest-tenured Cabinet member since World War II.”
The New York Times said Cho herself declined to answer questions from the inspector general, offering only a memo stating that letting the outside world know about her family was also an important part of her performance of public duties.
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