The Trump administration is rallying around Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer as she faces professional misconduct allegations that led to the suspension of two of her top aides last week.
The aides were named in a complaint to the agency’s inspector general alleging that they had scheduled personal travel during what were supposed to be official, taxpayer-funded trips, according to a report earlier this month in the New York Post. The embattled former Republican congresswoman was also accused of having an affair with a staffer and drinking in her office during the workday, the outlet reported.
On Sunday, the newspaper reported that investigators found an alcohol stash in her office and uncovered evidence that she took subordinates to a strip club while on a government trip.
Labor spokeswoman Courtney Parella declined to comment on the complaint last week. But Parella said in an earlier statement that “these unsubstantiated allegations are categorically false” and that the “Secretary is considering all possible avenues, including legal action, to fight these baseless accusations from anonymous sources.”
Chavez-DeRemer’s attorney, Nick Oberheiden, said in statement that “we are monitoring, with concern, that work-related information about the Secretary appears to be shared externally.”
“Despite attempts of distraction and attacks on her personal life, Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer continues to focus on her assigned mission — to advance President Trump’s economic agenda to improve the lives of American workers,” Oberheiden said.
The accusations have caught the attention of the business community in Washington, which supports the agency’s priorities under Chavez-DeRemer and is closely monitoring the investigation, according to two lobbyists who are frequently in touch with the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
The lobbyists, as well as agency employees, told The Washington Post that Chavez-DeRemer has largely been absent from Washington amid a 50-state “America at Work” tour, meeting with workers, employers and union members. Deputy secretary Keith Sonderling, a longtime ally of business leaders, has been leading policy and personnel decision-making in Washington, they said. On Friday, the department said that Chavez-DeRemer had completed a four-state swing through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, nearing the end of her cross-country tour.
“Keith has been running the Labor Department since Day 1, as we thought he would,” said one of the business lobbyists. “Her substantive interest is not that great in many areas. She hasn’t been in the building much. She has had, from what I can determine, minimal involvement in substantive matters.”
There is little to indicate that the White House has budged on support for Chavez-DeRemer, who has shown deep loyalty to President Donald Trump since she took the job. Chavez-DeRemer has sought to further the administration’s immigration crackdown by embarking on a campaign to root out alleged misuse of a highly skilled visa program and launching a controversial social media campaign that depicts a nearly all-White workforce.
The secretary has also kept a close relationship with the Teamsters union, which lobbied for her to get the job and has made inroads with Trump. Those relationships are seen as useful for Trump’s coalition in securing working-class support in future elections.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Trump continues to support Chavez-DeRemer.
“He’s aware of the internal investigation, and he stands by the secretary, and he thinks that she’s doing a tremendous job at the Department of Labor on behalf of American workers,” she said.
The agency has been very popular with the business community, despite early concerns about Chavez-DeRemer’s connections to organized labor. In particular, business leaders praised the agency’s emphasis on deregulation, investments in apprenticeships, and guidance in the form of opinion letters on how laws apply to specific workplaces.
Chavez-DeRemer got bipartisan support during the nomination process and the backing of the Teamsters and some other unions. But labor advocates say the administration, especially during the U.S. DOGE Service’s regulation cuts, has dismantled key workplace protections.
Although Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien recently said his office maintains a personal relationship with the labor secretary, many other labor leaders in Washington have had minimal contact with Chavez-DeRemer — including the president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions, according to seven people familiar with the situation, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive relationships. Chavez-DeRemer met with AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler once before her confirmation and a second time in April, when Shuler pushed back on DOGE’s activity at the Labor Department. The two haven’t spoken since, according to an AFL-CIO spokesperson.
A Teamsters spokeswoman said in a statement that Chavez-DeRemer is “the most engaged Labor Secretary we’ve had under a Republican administration, consistently visiting workplaces and meeting with workers across the country.”
At the same time, employees within the agency’s headquarters said that Chavez-DeRemer has been noticeably less present in the building than past secretaries and that she also does not share her schedule with staffers as her predecessors did, three people said. Her public schedule has not been updated since August. She has never held an all-hands meeting with the agency’s staff, three people said.
“The career staff view her as a ghost,” said a Labor Department employee who has worked at the agency for decades and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation. “She doesn’t publish her schedule. We don’t know where she’s at. We find out from the press releases that the public gets.”
“Morale is in the toilet in that building,” said Judy Conti, a longtime government affairs and public policy consultant who advocates for workers’ rights.
Former and current staffers also noted how loyal the secretary has been to Trump. In the fall, the agency displayed a massive banner of Trump’s face on the side of the building, which Chavez-DeRemer told Trump she was “honored to unveil.” She invited him to see his “beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker, along with the American flag and President Roosevelt.”
Some staffers voiced frustrations with Chavez-DeRemer’s leadership after a difficult start. When she joined the agency last year, the workforce was facing threats of layoffs, and Labor Department employees had told The Post that they were surprised when Chavez-DeRemer was sworn in at a ceremony with champagne and a birthday cake. A person familiar with the event said Chavez-DeRemer’s family had brought the cake because her swearing-in was around the same time as her birthday.
Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, who was sworn in this month after Trump fired his predecessor, told his employees in an email Tuesday that the office “takes all allegations of fraud, waste, abuse and misconduct seriously” and that “this complaint is likely to be of interest to our many stakeholders.” However, he cautioned that the office has a long-standing policy not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
D’Esposito served in Congress at the same time as Chavez-DeRemer and considers her a friend. He is among a number of inspectors general whom Trump has nominated with clearly partisan backgrounds.
The inspector general’s office looking into the allegations against Chavez-DeRemer has been shaken up by departures and management changes. Two officials — the assistant inspector general for investigations and the assistant inspector general for management — were placed on administrative leave after D’Esposito was sworn in, according to two people familiar with the changes. As of January, nearly one-fifth of the office’s workforce has left since the new administration took over, according to federal workforce data.
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