Free Republic

Angela Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law, spent her last minutes alive frantically calling her friends for help as her Tesla slowly sank in a pond on a remote Texas ranch, according to a report. Chao, the billionaire former CEO of dry bulk shipping giant Foremost Group, tragically died at the age of 50 on Feb. 10 after accidentally backing her car into the pond while making a three-point turn. The driving mishap was detailed in a report by The Wall Street Journal that shed light on the chaotic rescue efforts that ultimately came up short, turning what was supposed...

Is it a coincidence that McConnell is stepping down as Senate minority leader? On Feb. 12, 50-year-old Angela Chao was found dead in her Tesla that was submerged in a pond on private property in Blanco County, Texas, according to the incident report from fire department EMS personnel. Ms. Chao was the sixth and youngest daughter of Chinese-American shipping magnate James Si-Cheng Chao, who founded the New York-headquartered Foremost Group in 1964. She had been CEO of the company since 2018 and was a founding member of The Asian American Foundation. On Feb. 28, 82-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell...

The death of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law is being investigated as a crime weeks after her body was pulled from her submerged car in Texas. Angela Chao, 50, was found dead in her sinking vehicle in a pond on a ranch in Johnson City, near Austin, on Feb. 11. “Although the preliminary investigation indicated this was an unfortunate accident, the Sheriff’s Office is still investigating this accident as a criminal matter until they have sufficient evidence to rule out criminal activity,” the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Thursday letter to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to...

The recent death of American shipping magnate Angela Chao, the sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is now a "criminal investigation," according to the Texas sheriff's office investigating matter. Chao, the CEO of the Foremost Group was found dead shortly after midnight on Feb. 11 when pulled from a car that had gone into a pond on a private ranch about 40 miles from the Texas city of Austin, CNBC reported Thursday. “This incident was not a typical accident,” the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office told state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a letter. “Although the preliminary investigation indicated this...

Angela Chao, the CEO of the dry bulk shipping company Foremost Group and the sister of former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, has died in a car accident, according to the company and her family. Her father, James S.C. Chao, said the family was “heartbroken” over her death. Neither the company nor her family provided further details of the accident.

The train derailment and release of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 has resulted in at least 3,500 fish dead, according to an estimate from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Wildlife officers with the Ohio environmental agency found dead fish in Leslie Run, Bull Creek, and a portion of the North Fork of Beaver Creek, the agency told News5 on Monday. As of Feb. 8, some 3,500 minnow, sculpin, darter, and small sucker fish have been killed by the chemical release, the Department of Natural Resources told the outlet. Due to the spill, a water utility...

Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao fired back at former President Trump for his racist remarks about her — insisting his attacks reveal “a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.” Chao, 69 — who has been frequently been referred to by the former president as “Coco Chow” — issued the rare rebuke of the former president on Tuesday. “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name,” Chao, who was born in Taiwan, said in a statement to Politico. “Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next...

Former President Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden following the revelation that he was stashing classified documents at the University of Pennsylvania, which is reported to have accepted millions of dollars in mysterious donations from China.Trump speculated that China could have had access to the classified information because the Penn Biden Center reportedly received $54 million in anonymous Chinese donations between 2014 and 2019.“Biden’s documents are HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL, many pertain to UKRAINE, where Hunter was ‘raking in the dough,’ and FUNDED BY CHINA, which gave $55 Million to Biden, through Penn, and probably had easy access,” Trump wrote on Truth...

Kevin McCarthy revealed he had “dinner” with billionaire Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum in 2018 during remarks he made on a panel with Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, a shipping heiress of Chinese descent. McCarthy attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2018, the same year 45th President Donald Trump spoke to the elite group of wealthy businessmen, politicians, and journalists. During a 30-minute panel discussion with Chao, formerly Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, and Kirstjen Nielsen, formerly Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, McCarthy remarked on having “dinner” with Schwab during the World Economic Forum while describing...

Elaine Chao, former President Trump’s Transportation secretary, is declining to respond to Trump’s latest use of a racist nickname to attack her and urging the media to not repeat it. Trump on multiple occasions has invoked Chao as he lambastes her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and he did so again on Wednesday evening in a Truth Social post that included a racist nickname for Chao. MEDIA Elaine Chao: Media shouldn’t repeat Trump’s racism BY ZACH SCHONFELD - 12/29/22 10:18 AM ET SHARE TWEET Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Samuel...

Federal officials working on the government response to Covid-19 made well-timed financial trades when the pandemic began—both as the markets plunged and as they rallied—a Wall Street Journal investigation found. In January 2020, the U.S. public was largely unaware of the threat posed by the virus spreading in China, but health officials were on high alert and girding for a crisis. A deputy to top health official Anthony Fauci reported 10 sales of mutual funds and stocks totaling between $157,000 and $480,000 that month. Collectively, officials at another health agency, Health and Human Services, reported 60% more sales of stocks...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Monday on his show “The Lead” that former President Donald Trump’s “heinous attacks” against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife, former Secretary Elaine Chao were “just racist.” Tapper said, “In our politics lead, harsh criticism from former political allies of Donald Trump following a pair of heinous attacks against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, former Secretary Elaine Chao, she was the former Transportation Secretary for Trump. On his Truth Social account Trump wrote, quote, ‘Is McConnell approving all these trillions of dollars worth of Democrat-sponsored billions without even the slightest bit of...

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Monday ripped former President Trump’s recent remarks saying that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “death wish,” calling the comments against McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, an “absolutely despicable, racist attack.” Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, warned that Trump’s remarks could incite further violence. “When you see former President Trump just in the last 24 hours suggesting in a pretty thinly veiled way, using words that that could well cause violence against the Republican leader of...

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “it’s never, ever OK to be a racist” when asked about former President Donald Trump’s comments about former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Anchor Dana Bash said, “I have to ask you about what appears to be a threat by former President Trump against your colleague, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Trump said, quote, ‘He has a death wish for supporting Democratic-sponsored bills.’ He also mocked McConnell’s wife and his own former transportation secretary as, quote, ‘China loving wife, Coco Chow.’ You’re a member of Senate GOP leadership....

You might not have caught this earlier in the week, but President Trump unloaded on Mitch McConnell with a vengeance in a statement reacting to a Jordan Boyd piece at the Federalist on McConnell’s shady relationship with China.The statement was not kind: The Democrats have Mitch McConnell and his lovely wife, Elaine “Coco” Chao, over a barrel. He and she will never be prosecuted, as per the last paragraphs of this story, as long as he continues to give the Radical Left the Trillions and Trillions of Dollars that they constantly DEMAND. He was afraid to use the “Debt Ceiling...

For years, the McConnell and Chao families have cultivated a relationship that enriches the couple and grants status to the Chaos’ shipping company. For decades, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao have maintained a glaring conflict of interest, conducting extensive government business despite the Chao family’s deep ties to China through a maritime shipping company. Now, former President Donald Trump is calling attention to the top Republican’s problematic China ties, while most of Washington remains silent. “Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for...

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao, President Donald Trump's transportation secretary, no longer knew how to deal with the president, according to a forthcoming book. "Every day the leader and I wake up saying, 'How do we manage the president?'" Chao told a friend in December 2020, per the book. CNN on Wednesday reported on the excerpt from the book, titled "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

The White House on Tuesday struggled to explain why the Centers for Disease Control would announce new masking policies across the country, despite ongoing faith in the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines. “I know this is slightly awkward timing,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged at the beginning of the daily press briefing. The CDC scheduled a briefing on their new mask guidance for later in the afternoon.

Mainstream media figures, Big Tech moguls, investors, intelligence insiders, former government officials and titans of industry are set to meet in Sun Valley, Idaho this week for an annual conference held by “intensely private” investment bank Allen & Co. The annual globalist meeting, dubbed the “summer camp for billionaires” by NPR, is being held in the small town of Sun Valley, Idaho this week. The attendees are meeting to “plot some of the biggest deals in media and tech” among other undisclosed agenda items. Prominent globalist kingpins such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Walt Disney CEO...

The Transportation Department’s Inspector General made public on Wednesday a report that cites repeated examples of former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao allegedly using her staff and her office to help benefit her family and their business operations and revealed that staff members at the agency had raised ethics concerns. Elaine Chao is Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) wife, who notably resigned the day after the Capitol riot. The inspector general’s investigation detailed a series of instances in which Elaine Chao reportedly directed her staff to spend federal government time and resources to help with matters related to a family shipping...