Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer violated multiple department policies under her tenure, including by creating a hostile work environment, using government funds for personal travel and having an inappropriate relationship with an employee, according to a department watchdog.The labor department inspector general’s 44-page report, released Thursday, is the culmination of an exhaustive investigation that began in early January after an anonymous complaint alleging misconduct.
The report also accuses other former top department officials who worked with Chavez-DeRemer of multiple violations of Labor Department policy.More than three-dozen witnesses described working with Chavez-DeRemer, who led the department from March 2025 to April 2026, as “toxic, intimidating and humiliating,” according to the report.The inspector general’s office, however, didn’t “determine whether the conduct described in the evidence above was sufficient to constitute unlawful discrimination, retaliation, or a hostile work environment” under federal law.
The report touched on the previously reported inappropriate relationship that Chavez-DeRemer had with a member of her security detail.The inspector general said they “developed and maintained an inappropriately close and unprofessional relationship,” but that it “did not, however, obtain sufficient direct evidence to establish that the relationship was romantic or sexual.” In April 2025, the report said that Chavez-DeRemer requested an off-the-record stop during personal travel to Oregon at a place that featured “partially nude dancers” with the member of the protective detail with whom she had a relationship.
The secretary asked another agent to take money from her purse and “drop the bills one by one onto the partially nude woman.”Some of the other policy violations that Chavez-DeRemer committed, according to the inspector general, included improperly combining personal and official travel, consuming...