Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation on Monday follows months of scandals regarding her alleged inappropriate behavior and misuse of public funds.
At the time of her resignation, Chavez-DeRemer was reportedly being investigated by the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General for “travel fraud” that she allegedly carried out by ordering her top staffers to “make up” official trips where she could visit friends and family on the taxpayers’ dime. The former labor secretary also stands accused of taking Labor Department staffers to a strip club outside Portland during an official trip to Oregon.
Recommended Stories
While the White House was generally satisfied with Chavez-DeRemer’s performance as labor secretary, the scandals stemming from her alleged behavior had caused friction within the administration, sources familiar told NOTUS.
A Washington Examiner investigation found that Chavez-DeRemer had a long history of using campaign cash and public funds to pay for luxury expenses prior to her nomination to head the Department of Labor. The senators responsible for vetting Chavez-DeRemer did not discover this track record during her confirmation hearing, despite the documents detailing it being public records. While in Congress, for instance, campaign finance filings show that Chavez-DeRemer spent tens of thousands of dollars given to her by donors on steak, seafood, limousine rides, and trips to five-star resorts and casinos.
Among the more lurid accusations aimed at Chavez-DeRemer is the claim that, according to the inspector general report, she maintained an “inappropriate” romantic relationship with a member of her security detail. Though Chavez-DeRemer and her husband have denied the affair, the inspector general’s report cites multiple photographs of the secretary inviting him into her living quarters.
Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has also been hit with claims of sexual misconduct, with reports of him fondling female Labor Department employees leading to him being banned from the agency’s Washington headquarters.
Amid all of this, sources within the Department of Labor told reporters that Chavez-DeRemer created a hostile work environment for her staff. The secretary reportedly maintained a stash of liquor in her office that saw frequent use.
In what turned out to be a bad omen for Chavez-DeRemer, her two top staffers, chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright, resigned in early March following allegations that they enabled Chavez-DeRemer’s controversial behavior.
EMBATTLED LABOR SECRETARY HAS HISTORY OF QUESTIONABLE SPENDING THAT ELUDED CONGRESS
Also under investigation were allegations that Chavez-DeRemer directed top staffers to pressure civil servants into distributing grant funding in ways that could serve her future political ambitions.
Federal grant records show that, under Chavez-DeRemer, the Department of Labor continued to dole out millions of dollars to race-based and left-of-center organizations, a misalignment with the Trump administration’s efforts to root out taxpayer funding for liberal groups.
Staffers reportedly described DeRemer as an “absentee secretary” who left employees “deeply demoralized.”
“When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” Capital Research Center research director Mike Watson previously told the Washington Examiner. “Bureaucrats who aren’t being supervised, who aren’t being closely watched, they’ll do what they want to do, they’ll do what they have been doing, they’ll do what they got into government to do, which is to make government bigger, which is to make government more intrusive, and which is to make government carry out the progressive agenda.”
Chavez-DeRemer, who retained an outside lawyer around the time the allegations against her were made public, has denied the claims made against her.
