“Civil servants, especially those responsible for leading tens of thousands of other civil servants, must know that they serve the public and not their family’s private business interests,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, Oregon Democrat and Committee Chair. of Transport of the Chamber of Deputies and Infrastructure, which requested the investigation after the report by The Times.
Investigators found that Ms. Chao used her team to arrange details for Mr. Chao’s trip to China in October 2017, including asking, through the State Department, for China’s Ministry of Transport to provide two cars for one a six-person delegation, which included Ms. Chao’s younger sister, Angela Chao, who had succeeded her father as head of the family’s shipping company, and Angela Chao’s husband, venture capitalist Jim Breyer.
The trip was scheduled to include stops at places in China that received financial support from the company and also a meeting with “top leaders” in China that would include Elaine Chao’s father and sister, but not other members of the Department of Transportation team. . The trip was canceled shortly before Ms. Chao’s planned departure, after ethical issues were raised by officials from the State and Transport Departments.
Investigators also found that she repeatedly asked agency officials to help with her father’s tasks, including editing her Wikipedia page and promoting her biography in Chinese. They said she instructed two members of her office staff to send a copy of Chao’s book “to a well-known CEO of a major US company” to ask if he would write a preface for him.
At an instance in 2017, staff members from Ms. Chao’s office were assigned to check with the Department of Homeland Security on the status of an application for a work permit for a foreign student studying in the United States who had received a scholarship. studies from a Chao family foundation, the report said.
The student, according to the report, interviewed Mr. Chao at the headquarters of the family’s shipping company in New York to share Mr. Chao’s experience “with the generation of the Chinese millennium”.
In 2018, Ms. Chao’s team at the Department of Transportation helped promote her father at events at Columbia University, SUNY Maritime College, Lloyd’s List and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, according to the report.