Chao created special path for McConnell's favored projects

[DonViejo]

Source: Politico


A top Transportation official helped coordinate grant applications by McConnell’s political allies.

By TUCKER DOHERTY and TANYA SNYDER 06/10/2019 05:02 AM EDT

The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

Beginning in April 2017, Inman and Chao met annually with a delegation from Owensboro, Ky., a river port with long connections to McConnell, including a plaza named in his honor. At the meetings, according to participants, the secretary and the local officials discussed two projects of special importance to the river city of 59,809 people — a plan to upgrade road connections to a commercial riverport and a proposal to expedite reclassifying a local parkway as an Interstate spur, a move that could persuade private businesses to locate in Owensboro.

Inman, himself a longtime Owensboro resident and onetime mayoral candidate who is now Chao’s chief of staff, followed up the 2017 meeting by emailing the riverport authority on how to improve its application. He also discussed the project by phone with Al Mattingly, the chief executive of Daviess County, which includes Owensboro, who suggested Inman was instrumental in the process.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/mcconnell-elaine-chao-1358068?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f115-dd93-ad7f-f91513e50001&nlid=630318

[Bayard]

1. This is how he does it

He can't win in big college towns, like Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, so he ties a bunch of towns like Owensboro together. Bedazzles them with bullshit.

Come'on Amy McGrath--DECLARE!

[riversedge]

6. I wishs Amy would step in. I read that Schumer personally asked her to do so.

[duforsure]

2. How long before we find out

Millions have been funneled to him and is wife from these kinds of schemes. I think it will all be exposed on he and his wife's criminal activities.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Check to see who will handle shipping aluminum from Deripaska's Kentucky plant. Chao family? . . nt

[question everything]

4. Our own Juan and Eva Peron

[elleng]

5. Off with their HEADS!

[dlk]

7. One Hand Washes the Other...

[Mz Pip]

8. Of course she did

And no one is going to do a damn thing about it.

[JI7]

9. fuck these people

[dalton99a]

10. The dirtiest power couple in Washington

Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao