11 Jun 2019 9:36 pm
But wait, there's more.Misty » 11 Jun 2019 6:18 pm » wrote:The swamp creatures are at it again.Misty » 04 Jun 2019 5:20 pm » wrote:Another swamp creature.Chao created special path for McConnell’s favored projects.
The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.
Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.
The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist.
Chao’s designation of Inman as a special intermediary for Kentucky — a privilege other states did not enjoy — gave a special advantage to projects favored by her husband, which could in turn benefit his political interests. In such situations, ethicists say, each member of a couple benefits personally from the success of the other.
“Where a Cabinet secretary is doing things that are going to help her husband get reelected, that starts to rise to the level of feeling more like corruption to the average American. … I do think there are people who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behavior,’” said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution scholar who has studied political influence in federal grant-making.
In fact, days after launching his 2020 reelection campaign McConnell asked Owensboro’s mayor to set up a luncheon with business and political leaders at which the senator claimed credit for delivering the grant.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Still Owns Shares She Pledged To Divest
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao still owns shares in a major construction firm despite pledging to divest them, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal.
Chao had served on the board of the company, Vulcan Materials, for about two years before joining the Trump administration as head of the Transportation Department.
In part of her ethics agreement, Chao said she would end her financial interests in the company by taking “a cash payout for all of my vested deferred stock units” by April 2018.
But a financial disclosure report released by the Transportation Secretary’s husband, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), revealed Chao had maintained ownership of somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Vulcan stock.
The Wall Street Journal estimates Chao has netted more than $40,000 from the stock since April 2018, the date she agreed to cash out on her shares.
The Transportation Secretary has been one of the most vocal advocates of President Trump’s plan to invest $1 trillion into U.S. infrastructure, and critics are concerned federal funds would be directly allocated to Vulcan, one of the nation’s largest suppliers of construction materials.