WASHINGTON \u2014 A sprawling internal investigation into Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has uncovered an alcohol \u201cstash\u201d in her Washington, DC, office \u2014 and evidence she took subordinates to a strip club while on an official departmental trip, according to five sources familiar with the probe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The investigation has also confirmed that rumors the secretary pursued an \u201cinappropriate\u201d relationship with an underling were discussed internally months ago and dismissed by her chief of staff Jihun Han \u2014 who was put on leave Monday<\/a> along with his deputy Rebecca Wright, three of the sources affirmed.<\/p>\n The Post\u00a0first exposed<\/a>\u00a0a bombshell complaint that alleged Chavez-DeRemer, 57, had also committed \u201ctravel fraud\u201d by having Han and Wright \u201cmake up\u201d\u00a0official trips, was drinking in her office during the workday and enabled a hostile work environment \u2014 with her top aides belittling and bullying staffers.<\/p>\n \u201cSecretary Chavez-DeRemer firmly denies any allegations of wrongdoing,\u201d said her attorney, Dr. Nick Oberheiden, in a statement. AP<\/p>\n The complaint has sparked at least a dozen interviews so far with government officials and staff \u2014 an indication of the expansiveness of the probe.<\/p>\n The interviews have also uncovered a previously unreported incident involving Chavez-DeRemer allegedly taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club in April 2025, per three of those sources and records reviewed by The Post.<\/p>\n The April 18 visit to the club, Angels PDX, outside of Portland came at the tail end of a five-day trip to meet with the state\u2019s Democratic governor Tina Kotek, a CEO of a truck manufacturing company, and to tour an Intel chip center and view an \u201cironworker project,\u201d official travel schedules show<\/a>.<\/p>\n Travel vouchers show<\/a> taxpayers forked over $2,890.06 in total for the secretary\u2019s Oregon trip, with costs of $1,324.21 for transportation, $722 for lodging, $655 for meals and $188.35 for miscellaneous expenses.<\/p>\n The April 18 visit to the Angels PDX club outside of Portland came at the tail end of a five-day trip to meet with state officials and tour businesses. Google Street<\/p>\n \u201cSecretary Chavez-DeRemer firmly denies any allegations of wrongdoing. Her utmost priority remains to advance President Trump\u2019s agenda by continuing her hard and successful work for the betterment of the American people,\u201d said her attorney, Dr. Nick Oberheiden, in a statement.<\/p>\n The Labor Department inspector general\u2019s office, helmed by former New York GOP Rep. Anthony D\u2019Esposito, is seeking all potential evidence \u2014 including video footage \u2014 about at least five purported meet-ups between the married mother-of-two and her alleged paramour at the secretary\u2019s DC apartment and a Las Vegas hotel.<\/p>\n The subordinate in the alleged \u201cinappropriate\u201d relationship with the secretary, who did not respond to a request for comment, has since been placed on administrative leave, sources said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department will not comment on internal or personnel matters,\u201d a DOL spokesperson said in a statement Friday. \u201cThe Secretary remains focused on carrying out the Department\u2019s mission and supporting American workers.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tKeep up with today\u2019s most important news\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStay up on the very latest with Evening Update.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The White House directed The Post to a statement from press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday. \u201cI have spoken to the president about that report regarding the secretary,\u201d she told reporters during the daily briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s aware of the internal investigation, and he stands by the secretary, and he thinks that she\u2019s doing a tremendous job at the Department of Labor on behalf of American workers,\u201d Leavitt added.<\/p>\n The allegations against the secretary and her aides were contained in a complaint filed last month with the DOL\u2019s Office of Inspector General, which was first reported by The Post<\/a> Jan. 9.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not an ounce of truth to this, and anyone who knows my wife would know that,\u201d Chavez-DeRemer\u2019s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, previously said of the complaint\u2019s allegations in a statement.<\/p>\n The IG\u2019s office has not confirmed or denied the existence or non-existence of an investigation.<\/p>\n So far, the interviews have focused on Han and Wright, who are said to have provided \u201ccover\u201d for the secretary\u2019s conduct, insiders said. Neither responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Jihun Han, the secretary\u2019s chief of staff, was placed on administrative leave earlier this week. U.S. Department of Labor<\/p>\n The decision to put the pair on leave was made in part because they continued to exert improper influence over junior staff, even after the investigation began, The Post understands.<\/p>\n Han had already leaned on staffers to silence questions about Chavez-DeRemer\u2019s rumored affair a few months ago, instructing aides to \u201cleave it alone,\u201d according to sources and the IG complaint.<\/p>\n The chief of staff and deputy chief of staff have also been accused since the probe started of misleading the White House about their and the secretary\u2019s conduct \u2014 with Wright being outed for having openly exhibited disdain for President Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t care how POTUS looks,\u201d she told staff last year, according to two sources, including a current DOL employee, \u201cand we don\u2019t care what the White House tells us to do. We only care that the secretary looks good.\u201d<\/p>\n White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the president is \u201caware of the internal investigation, and he stands by the secretary.\u201d AP<\/p>\n Chavez-DeRemer was accused in the complaint of having Han and Wright \u201cmake up\u201d official trips, finding a conference or other event to attend\u00a0so she\u00a0had an excuse to\u00a0visit her family members or travel for pleasure to favored destinations like Nevada.<\/p>\n The secretary went to the Red Rocks Casino Resort and Spa in Vegas at least four times last year \u2014 and twice with her alleged affair partner in the department, per the complaint and travel schedules.<\/p>\n On one of those four visits, which was listed as a \u201cpersonal\u201d trip in travel schedules, the labor boss celebrated her niece\u2019s 40th birthday party at the hotel while the federal government was shut down in late October, according to sources, photos and videos obtained by The Post.<\/p>\n Three other official visits to Sin City were for a Teamsters\u2019 conference in April, a carpenters\u2019 union conference in August and an agricultural labor conference in December, schedules show.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t care how POTUS looks,\u201d Wright told staff last year, according to sources, including a current DOL employee, \u201cand we don\u2019t care what the White House tells us to do. We only care that the secretary looks good.\u201d U.S. Department of Labor<\/p>\n On another work trip in December, which her schedule shows was to speak at an America First Policy Institute event in Palm Beach, Fla., Chavez-DeRemer was warned by ethics officials that she had to pay her own way for some of it, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n Chavez-DeRemer<\/a> and Wright flouted this by scheduling an \u201cofficial\u201d dinner with \u201cjust the two of them,\u201d according to the complaint \u2014 accusations which the IG investigation has since confirmed, sources said.<\/p>\n Despite the Florida trip lasting five days, schedules show, the labor secretary had just one speaking engagement at a luncheon.<\/p>\n A \u201cstash\u201d of champagne and other liquor cited in the complaint was also uncovered by investigators in the two women\u2019s offices this week, sources added.<\/p>\n Staff have revealed amid the internal investigation that they were told to remove items from the secretary\u2019s calendar that ethics lawyers might not approve of \u2014 and just put the trips on her personal schedule.<\/p>\n The secretary was also accused of having staff run personal errands while on the government dole.<\/p>\n Chavez-DeRemer set a goal of visiting all 50 states on official trips as part of an \u201cAmerica at Work<\/a>\u201d listening tour in 2025 \u2014 but only went to around three dozen. She has faulted the 43-day government shutdown<\/a> in October and November for derailing that project.<\/p>\n Of her 53 official trips as secretary, Chavez-DeRemer has spent 10 either in Nevada or locations where she has family ties \u2014 including Oregon, her home state; Arizona, where she and her anesthesiologist husband have a home; and Michigan, where her daughter lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 A sprawling internal investigation into Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has uncovered an alcohol \u201cstash\u201d in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[38343,153,68,44558,9,11,10,21607,87,9423,9157,58],"class_list":["post-104271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-department-of-labor","tag-donald-trump","tag-exclusive","tag-inspector-general","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-oregon","tag-politics","tag-portland","tag-strip-clubs","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}