A story on Elaine Chao would be nice.There’s plenty of material from as early as 1987, when Rudy Giuliani indicted United Orient Bank officers for money laundering. One, James S.C. Chao—father of Rudy’s fellow Reagan appointee, Elaine—wasn’t indicted.
As the article mentioned that McConnell practically appointed his wife as Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, it’s not suprising that Chao appointed her husband’s donor/political operative/aquiantance—a State Farm agent by trade—as her Chief of Staff.
In the months preceding Trump’s Executive Order that tasked Secretary Chao witn the rollback of LNG transportation safety regulations, her brother in law presciently increased his hedge fund’s LNG holdings by tens of millions of dollars.
Her brother in law also increased his Vulcan Materials holdings by ~$13 million while Chao held on to the Vulcan Materials stocks she’d promised to divest.
Her brother in law increased his LNG and shipoing holdings shortly before a $43B deal for Alaskan LNG was inked during Trump’s visit to China. Bank of China, on whose board Chao’s sister Angela sits, was a party to the agreement.
He also dumped a $50M Tesla holding weeks before Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement—when Elon Musk quit a Trump advisory board in disgust.
Speaking of Chao’s brothers in law, Chao claimed that Jeffrey Epstein enabler, Alex Acosta, was behind the nomination of another brother in law, Gordon Hartogensis, as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
Coincidentally, a Delaware pension fund—itself backed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation—invested $35,000,000 in a venture capital fund managed by another brother in law, Jim Breyer—after Hartogensis was confirmed.
Shortly after her confirmation, Secretary Chao hired a lobbyist as her “advisor on ports.” Two of the lobbyist’s clients later received tens of millions of dollars in DOT grants. The lobbyist also represents Vulcan Materials, for whom Chao was a director.