A criminal investigation is underway after Foremost Group CEO Angela Chao, sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), was found dead in a vehicle submerged in a pond in a small Texas town near Austin.
“This incident was not a typical accident,” the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office reportedly wrote in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday. “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 CEO was found dead in her submerged vehicle on February 11.
McConnell is married to Elaine Chao, who has served as the secretary of both the U.S. Labor and U.S. Transportation Departments. Elaine Chao (pictured above) is Angela Chao’s sister.
The Foremost Group, a shipping company, was founded by the Chao sisters’ father, James Si-Cheng Chao, in 1964. Si-Cheng Chao was a Chinese immigrant.
More than 70 percent of the Foremost Group’s freight, which it charters on behalf of private companies, ships to China.
Renowned author Peter Schweizer wrote a book called “Red Handed,” which detailed the connections between McConnell and the Chinese Community Party via his wife, Elaine Chao.
The Tennessee Star’s interviewed Schweizer about those connections when the book was released in 2022.
“So when Mitch McConnell married Elaine Chao, he married into a family that had very substantial connections on Mainland China with the Chinese Communist Party,” Schweizer said in the interview. “James Chao, who was Elaine’s father, that would be Senator Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, grew up with Jiāng Zémín, who was the premier of China in the 1990s.”
Schweizer noted that over the years, McConnell has received millions in campaign funding from family members of his wealthy wife.
Critics like Schweizer argue that McConnell’s personal fortune could lead to policy decisions sympathetic towards the Chinese Communist Party.
Schweizer continued:
When it comes to Mitch McConnell, it’s pretty clear his financial fortunes are fused with those of the Chao family. In fact, James Chao gave him a gift more than a decade ago of between $5 and $25 million dollars, and that, you know, basically quadrupled his net worth overnight.
And when Elaine Chao became the transportation secretary, when she took official delegations as transportation secretary to China, she planned to and wanted to bring her sister and her father along on those trips.
So you have this fusing of the Chao family and Mitch McConnell to the Chinese state. And it creates a circumstance where if Mitch McConnell were to do something that Beijing did not like, they could literally destroy the business overnight.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter/X.
Photo “Angela Chao” by Foremost Group. Background Photo “Sen. Mitch McConnell” by Sen. Mitch McConnell.
