A recent report suggests that the wife one of the longest serving U.S. senators may be a spy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to an investigative report published this week by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), Elaine Chao, the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), held multiple positions in the Chinese government that “partially overlapped with her two U.S. Cabinet posts.”
The website reports:
Chao — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xiaolan — has also received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008, including within arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. Beijing uses the UFWD to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).
Chao worked as Department of Labor (DOL) secretary during President George W. Bush’s tenure, and as Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term. She did not divulge “any of the reported Chinese government positions during her January 2017 DOT secretary Senate confirmation hearing, which required her to list all positions held within the last ten years,” according to the Daily Caller.
Conflict of Interest?
Chao, who was born in Taiwan and became a U.S. citizen when she was 19, was also an advisor to and committee member of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) between September 2012 and September 2017, which coincided with her DOT secretary tenure. A fellow in China Studies at The Jamestown Foundation told DCNF that the ACFROC exists to promote Chinese narratives and to carry out “influence and intelligence operations.”
Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member of State Armor (a consulting firm focused on helping states respond to global security threats), pointed out to the Daily Caller that, while secretary of DOT, Chao “did nothing to fix U.S. policy failures that have decimated our maritime industrial base while her family business profited from the CCP’s aggressive moves to exploit those failures.”
The report says that Chao’s late sister and father also held positions in the Chinese government.
Chao’s spokesman denied that she or any members of her family ever “held a position with a foreign government or acted on behalf of one,” and dubbed DCNF’s report “racist.”
Previous Suspicions
Suspicions about Chao have been circulating for a long time. In 2001, WorldNetDaily published a report saying that she and her father had “extensive personal ties to communist China’s President Jiang Zemin.”
A few years ago, Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash and Profiles in Corruption, told Fox News that McConnell and his wife were “financially tied to the Chinese government.”
Around the same time, we noted in an article titled “Communist China Infiltrating Everything” that Chao “comes from a family that made its fortune in shipping through close ties to the CCP dating back decades.”
And just this past July, while addressing McConnell’s long absence and hospitalization, former Georgia GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told TMZ that Chao is a possible CCP spy:
This really irritates me. The Republican Party is … campaigning against communism right now. What about Elaine Chao? Elaine Chao flew to China and met with the vice president just a few days after Mitch McConnell … practically died and went to the hospital. So, when are we going to call out a possible communist Chinese spy right there making money off of the American people? … What woman leaves her husband’s side while he is dead or dying in the hospital, flies to China, and meets with the vice president?
On Wednesday, Greene called for an investigation. “I called out Elaine Chao months ago for being a suspected Chinese spy,” she said on X. “When is there going to be an investigation?” There have been no signs of one so far.
Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, suggested that this may explain why McConnell opposed the election reform bill, the SAVE America Act. In June, he joined Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in voting against a version of the bill that former Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) offered as an amendment to the budget reconciliation bill. “Given what we now know about China’s meddling in the 2020 election, this might help explain why Mitch McConnell has worked so hard to block the SAVE America Act,” said Davis on his X account.
McConnell’s Senate Tenure
McConnell married Chao in 1993, and has been a U.S. senator since 1985. Only Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa has been in the Senate longer.
During his four-decade senatorial run, McConnell has accrued a lifetime Freedom Score of 56 percent in TNA’s Freedom Index. It is a dismal record. He has voted for FISA 702 reauthorization, against reducing spending on foreign aid, against the War Powers Resolution, against eliminating billions of dollars in funding for refugees, and, essentially, against any measures that pose a threat to the nation’s reckless spending.
His final term ends January 3, 2027.
