Mitch McConnell declined to share his thoughts on former President Donald Trump’s attack on his wife Elaine Chao, who served as Mr Trump’s secretary of transportation.
Mr Trump went after Mr McConnell after the Senate GOP leader said that the Republicans are more likely to flip the House than the Senate because “candidate quality” is more important in statewide races, suggesting that many of the GOP nominees endorsed by Mr Trump aren’t up to scratch.
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate. This is such an affront to honor and to leadership,” Mr Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social. “He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”
Mr McConnell was asked in his home state of Kentucky if he had a response to Mr Trump, to which he just said, “no”.
Ms Chao, 69, and Mr McConnell, 80, married in 1993. She resigned from Mr Trump’s Cabinet after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. She previously helmed the Transportation Department under President George HW Bush between 1989 and 1991 and served as the secretary of labor under President George W Bush between 2001 and 2009.
After the insurrection, she said in a letter to her staff at the Transportation Department (DOT) that the riot was “entirely avoidable” and that she was “deeply troubled” by what had happened.
She officially left the post on 11 January 2021.
Mr Trump mentioning Ms Chao’s family was probably connected to the Foremost Group, a shipping company started by Ms Chao’s father and currently operated by her sister, according to The Hill.
It’s a US company conducting business in China and elsewhere.
A report by the DOT Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released in March of last year stated that “this report does not make any conclusion regarding the compliance of the Secretary or any other Federal employee with any ethical principle or rule”.
The case was handed over to the Department of Justice, which chose not to pursue an investigation of the secretary at the time.
Mitch Behm, the Deputy Inspector General, said in a letter to Congress on 2 March 2021 that “we concluded that a formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted”.
The report, which was attached to the letter, said that “during the course of its investigation, OIG discovered evidence relating to potential ethics concerns arising from the actions of the Secretary and Office of the Secretary (OST) staff under her direction”.
The concerns were related to “tasking OST political appointees to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about the status of a work permit application submitted by a foreign student studying at a US university who was a recipient of Chao family philanthropy”.
It was also linked to “including family members and personal events in the Secretary’s planned, but subsequently cancelled, trip to China in November 2017,” “providing DOT Public Affairs and media support to the Secretary’s father,” and “using DOT resources and OST staff time for tasks for the Secretary that appear to be personal in nature”.
The investigation was referred to the Justice Department “for criminal prosecution” on 16 December 2020, the report said.
The United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the District of Columbia “declined to open a criminal investigation on this matter. The USAO stated that there may be ethical and/or administrative issues to address but there is not predication to open a criminal investigation,” the report added.
A spokesperson for former Secretary Chao claimed that “this report exonerates the Secretary from baseless accusations and closes the book on an election-year effort to impugn her history-making career as the first Asian American woman appointed to a President’s Cabinet and her outstanding record as the longest tenured Cabinet member since World War II”.
Mr Trump has endorsed Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, and Georgia, who are trailing their Democratic opponents in the polls.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” Mr McConnell previously told the press in Kentucky.
The squabble between Mr Trump and Mr McConnell intensified after the Capitol riot when the Senate Republican leader came out swinging against the then-president.
Mr Trump has since blasted Mr McConnell, arguing that he’s disloyal and calling him “Old Crow”.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump posted on Truth Social that “Mitch McConnell got played like a fiddle with the vote ... by the Senate Democrats”.
“First he gave them the fake Infrastructure Bill, then Guns, never used the Debt Ceiling for negotiating purposes (gave it away for NOTHING!), and now this,” Mr Trump said following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at reforming healthcare, taxes, and putting in place new climate crisis measures. “Mitch doesn’t have a clue – he is sooo bad for the Republican Party!”
Mr McConnell has said that the fight for the Senate in November’s midterm elections will be “extremely close”.
“Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly,” the minority leader said last week.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats are slightly favoured to win the Senate.
