A Republican senator who already lost his seat to a Trump-backed challenger is blocking four of President Trump's labor nominees, demanding the White House answer for the misconduct of a cabinet secretary who resigned three months ago.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, placed a hold Friday on nominees to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the National Mediation Board. His stated reason: the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General released a damning 38-page report Thursday on former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Cassidy says the White House hasn't briefed Congress on the findings.
"Now that the investigation is complete, we need answers," Cassidy said in a statement. "Members and staff were not briefed on the findings. That is unacceptable and disregards Congress's constitutional oversight role."
The report itself is ugly. Based on interviews with 38 witnesses and a review of more than 500 documents, images and videos, investigators found Chavez-DeRemer engaged in an "inappropriate relationship" with a member of her security detail — electronic hotel door records suggested overnight visits to each other's rooms. She directed staff to organize her bedroom closet on government time, then asked for a video documenting their work, according to the AP. She sent a Hispanic federal employee to communicate with her Spanish-speaking house cleaner and movers. She and her aides "regularly drank alcohol" in her study during official duty hours, and employees who abstained were ridiculed. During a personal trip to Oregon, she stopped at a strip club and ordered her security agent to drop cash on a dancer against his wishes, the report states.
Chavez-DeRemer also misused government funds for personal travel — including 13 trips to visit family or personal residences and five to Las Vegas — and failed to report gifts including an alligator-hide wallet, cowboy hats, and rodeo tickets.
Chavez-DeRemer's attorney, Nick Oberheiden, pushed back: "Secretary Chavez-DeRemer is not surprised about the report: the report is untimely, moot, built around undisclosed individuals, and concludes what Ms Chavez-DeRemer always knew, namely that she did not break any laws."
The White House was blunt. "These are highly qualified nominees that should be confirmed without delay," a White House official told the New York Post.
Here's what smells like swamp business rather than principled oversight. Cassidy was denied a third term after losing his primary to a Trump-backed opponent. He's a lame duck with nothing to lose. Trump's actual nominee to replace Chavez-DeRemer, Keith Sonderling, has already cleared the HELP Committee and is awaiting a full Senate vote. The four nominees Cassidy is blocking work at independent agencies dealing with collective bargaining and worker issues — the kind of positions the permanent labor-regulatory apparatus cares about most.
Cassidy says the HELP Committee "will not consider additional labor nominees until bipartisan members and staff have been fully briefed." A senator already voted out, leveraging a scandal involving a secretary already gone, to freeze nominees who had nothing to do with any of it. The Guardian and the AP both covered the IG findings in extensive detail. The Post noted Cassidy's impending departure. None raised the obvious question: where was this oversight energy when Biden's cabinet picks sailed through confirmation?
If this is oversight, it's the kind that only ever points one direction.
