Roger Williams – Chao “repeatedly used her connections and celebrity status in China to boost the profile of [her family’s shipping] company, which benefits handsomely from the expansive industrial policies in Beijing that are at the heart of diplomatic tensions with the United States,” according to a New York Times exposé on Monday that builds off research from Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book Secret Empires. Chao, who is also the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has been the subject of intense criticism over the years due to the deep financial ties between her family’s shipping business and China’s communist regime.
The nearly 6,000-word Times article begins by recounting an urgent email sent to the State Department in 2017 by an official at the American embassy in Beijing. The subject line read “Secretary Chao – Ethics Question.”