The Labor Department's Watchdog Interviewed 53 Employees. It Found a 'Toxic, Humiliating' Office.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who ran the Labor Department until she resigned in April, violated her own agency's policy against workplace harassment, according to a report the department's Office of Inspector General released Thursday after a months-long investigation.

The inquiry started with an anonymous complaint alleging that Chavez-DeRemer had contributed to a hostile work environment, was involved in an inappropriate relationship with a member of her security detail, ignored travel regulations, and directed subordinates to run personal errands for her. Investigators, working under Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito, the former Republican congressman from New York, interviewed 53 current and former Labor Department employees and found merit in all of the original allegations and additional ones besides. Chavez-DeRemer herself was never interviewed. She resigned one day before her scheduled interview.

Witnesses described the Office of the Secretary as "toxic, humiliating and intimidating." The report singles out chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright for what it calls "threatening, demeaning, and abusive verbal and written communication" with staff — remarks about employees' appearance and hygiene, and repeated threats to fire people, particularly anyone suspected of leaking to reporters. Witnesses said Wright hired based on physical appearance rather than qualifications, told one employee not to cut her hair above her shoulders to avoid "turning into a lesbian," and moved another employee's desk because she did not want a "fat person" visible in the front office. Chavez-DeRemer, the report concludes, "was seemingly aware of this behavior and failed to take action to stop this behavior or take appropriate disciplinary action."

On the alleged affair, investigators pulled electronic hotel door lock records from several trips and surveillance footage from the entrances to her residence. The evidence did not establish a romantic or sexual relationship, but the report concludes she "developed and maintained an inappropriately close and unprofessional relationship" with an agent assigned to protect her, identified only as ASAIC 1, who also supervised other members of the detail. In one episode, the report says, Chavez-DeRemer brought her driver into a strip club with her and that agent, handed him money from her purse and directed him to give it to a performer, then pressed him to drop bills one at a time onto a partially nude woman. The driver resisted twice and complied both times after ASAIC 1 told him to.

The report also found she repeatedly assigned personal tasks to subordinates on the clock, including sending her personal aide and executive assistant to her residence in a department vehicle in the middle of a workday to hang her laundry and dry cleaning.

Her attorney, Nick Oberheiden, noted in a statement to NPR that investigators did not find that she broke any law. "While some — with or without their own agenda — may not have liked the way she managed the Department, Secretary Chavez-DeRemer looks back with the same pride of having served President Trump's Administration and the American workers," he wrote. The inspector general stopped short of concluding that she or her staff violated federal law.