Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer oversaw a “toxic, intimidating and humiliating” workplace and repeatedly violated department policy, according to an internal watchdog report released Thursday evening.
The report contains testimony from dozens of witnesses who say Chavez-DeRemer failed to prevent persistent harassment, regularly drank alcohol on the job and spent federal money on personal travel.
The 44-page report comes several months after Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April following multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior. She was the third Cabinet official under President Donald Trump’s second term to step down and was scheduled to be interviewed by agency Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito’s office when she resigned.
D’Esposito found that Chavez-DeRemer was involved in an “unprofessional relationship” with a member of her security team, but did not “obtain sufficient direct evidence to establish that the relationship was romantic or sexual.”
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The report describes one incident in which Chavez-DeRemer visited a strip club with the security agent during a personal trip to her home state of Oregon. The then-secretary asked a driver to go inside with them and requested he give money to a semi-nude performer. When the driver resisted, the security agent told the driver to comply and later to keep quiet about the encounter.
Witnesses cited in the report also said Chavez-DeRemer publicly discussed employee performance, and sent Labor Department employees to perform tasks at her home, including laundry and organizing her closet. The report found that Chavez-DeRemer “regularly drank alcohol in [her] study during official duty hours,” and when other employees attending meetings declined alcohol, she and others “pressured them to participate or ridiculed them for abstaining.”
Chavez-DeRemer’s nationwide listening tour, called “America at Work,” often centered around destinations where the secretary had friends or family, according to the report. Witnesses said she required stops to be within one hour of a commercial airport and limited site visits to 60 to 90 minutes.
Chavez-DeRemer has publicly disputed the allegations through an agency spokeswoman but did not immediately return a request for comment from NOTUS.
Following her departure, Chavez-DeRemer launched a Republican-aligned political action committee, the American Workers First PAC.
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