Drain the swamp?
Hardly.
Donald Trump has selected Elaine Chao to be his secretary of transportation. Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Moreover, Chao was vice president for syndications at Bank of America Capital Markets Group in San Francisco and an international banker at Citicorp in New York. She was secretary of transportation under George W. Bush.
The New York Times described her as “an unapologetically ambitious operator with an expansive network, a short fuse, and a seemingly inexhaustible drive to get to the top and stay there.” According to the report, Chao “had gold-colored coins minted with her name in bas-relief and employed a ‘Veep’-like staff member who carried around her bag.” Veep is a political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
She asked John Huang to give money to her husband. Huang worked for Lippo Bank in California and Worthen Bank in Arkansas. He was also a deputy assistant secretary for international economic affairs in Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department before he became a chief fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in 1996. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge for violating campaign finance laws and was sentenced to one year of probation.
Chao is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
