A Department of Labor inspector general report released Thursday concluded that former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer maintained an inappropriately close relationship with her bodyguard and committed a string of policy violations, findings that cap months of scandal surrounding her brief tenure.
The 44-page report, first detailed by the New York Post, found that Chavez-DeRemer "developed and maintained an inappropriately close and unprofessional relationship" with Brian Sloan, the security guard who held supervisory and operational authority over her protective detail. The Office of the Inspector General said a preponderance of the evidence substantiated multiple violations of department policy, covering everything from workplace harassment rules to ethics standards governing gifts and travel.
Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April. Three senior staffers, ex-chief of staff Jihun Han, then-deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright, and former director of advance Melissa Robey, were fired. The inspector general found that all four subordinates, including Sloan, also committed multiple policy violations of their own.
Among the most damaging findings is an April 2025 incident at an Oregon strip club. During what Just The News described as an unplanned, off-the-record stop on an official trip, Chavez-DeRemer directed a member of her security detail to hand money to a partially nude performer. The report states she "took money from her purse, gave the money to the driver, and directed him to give it to the performer."
The agent resisted. He sought guidance from Sloan, who instructed him to comply. Chavez-DeRemer then escalated the situation.
"Chavez-DeRemer then took additional money from her purse and asked the agent to drop the bills one by one onto the partially nude woman."
The agent hesitated a second time and again looked to Sloan for intervention. Sloan told him to follow the secretary's instructions. The report states plainly: "The agent complied against his wishes." A cabinet secretary used her authority to pressure a federal employee into an act he tried to refuse, not once, but twice. That is the conduct the inspector general documented.
The IG's investigators dug into the relationship between Chavez-DeRemer and Sloan with electronic records and witness accounts. They obtained hotel door lock records from two Las Vegas trips that "appeared to indicate" the two spent at least portions of the night in each other's rooms. AP News reported that key fob records and video footage also documented Sloan's visits to Chavez-DeRemer's private home, and that the relationship "appeared to continue even after he was placed on administrative leave and was suspended from his official duties."
One Las Vegas trip, in October 2025, took Chavez-DeRemer to the Red Rocks Casino Resort and Spa to celebrate her niece's 40th birthday. The Post obtained images of Chavez-DeRemer poolside with her bodyguard during that visit. The trip occurred while the federal government was shut down.
The report did note that investigators found insufficient evidence "to establish that Chavez-DeRemer and [Sloan] engaged in a romantic or sexual relationship." But the IG did not need to clear that bar to substantiate the violations it found. The relationship, as documented, was "inconsistent with federal impartiality and preferential-treatment standards", and that alone broke department rules.
A separate witness account described Chavez-DeRemer massaging Sloan's shoulders while seated behind him in a vehicle during a trip to Michigan. During another exchange captured in the report, she asked whether he was tired, and Sloan responded that he was "solid as a rock," after which both laughed.
The misconduct extended well beyond the relationship. Newsmax reported that investigators interviewed 53 witnesses and reviewed more than 500 documents. Of those witnesses, 38 described the secretary's office as "toxic, intimidating and humiliating." That is not a disgruntled handful. That is a supermajority of the people who worked closest to the nation's top labor official.
The IG report also found that Chavez-DeRemer, in consultation with Wright, excluded agents from her security detail based on the perception that they were "too old, physically unfit, overly rule-bound, or 'too MAGA.'" Sloan, for his part, sometimes reduced the presence of other agents to place himself alone as her protector, a move the IG flagged as potentially weakening her security coverage.
Political scandals involving personal misconduct by officials are hardly new in Washington. Kristi Noem's career was upended by a personal scandal of a different kind. The pattern is familiar: a public servant entrusted with serious responsibility lets private conduct corrode the office.
Beyond the relationship with Sloan and the strip club incident, the IG report listed four additional areas where Chavez-DeRemer broke protocol. She "combined personal and official travel in a manner inconsistent with DOL policy." She "possessed and consumed alcohol on federal property without proper authorization." She "directed government employees to perform personal tasks using official time and resources." And she "failed to report gifts through required channels."
Han, Wright, and Robey were each found to have failed to comply with department policies related to workplace harassment, consuming alcohol while on the job, improper travel, and misuse of government resources. The IG report did not single out each staffer's individual violations in the details available, but the breadth of the findings, four subordinates, multiple categories, paints a picture of a department leadership team that treated federal rules as optional.
Chavez-DeRemer resigned one day before her scheduled interview with investigators, according to Newsmax. She has not publicly addressed the IG report's findings. The New York Post sought comment through the Log Cabin Republicans, the conservative advocacy group whose board Chavez-DeRemer joined last month. The group did not immediately respond.
When she departed in April, Chavez-DeRemer pushed back against the allegations in broad terms. Breitbart reported that the White House had effectively sidelined her months before her resignation as scandals mounted, with staff leaving the department and the business community distancing itself.
"The allegations against me, my family, and my team have been peddled by high-ranked deep state actors who have been coordinating with the one-sided news media."
That was Chavez-DeRemer's framing in April. The IG report, produced by the department's own independent watchdog after interviewing dozens of witnesses and reviewing hundreds of documents, tells a different story, one built on electronic records, firsthand accounts, and a federal agent who said he was forced to do something he did not want to do.
National Review noted that the White House stated Chavez-DeRemer was leaving "to take a position in the private sector." The IG investigation, which began in January, had by that point already uncovered enough to make her position untenable. Her husband had separately been banned from DOL headquarters over allegations he inappropriately touched staffers, and leaked texts involving her husband and father sending inappropriate messages to female staffers triggered her final departure.
Washington has seen no shortage of misconduct allegations against public officials in recent years. Federal agents seized Eric Swalwell's devices as part of a sexual misconduct probe, and past relationships involving White House-connected figures have surfaced in other investigations. Each case reinforces the same question: who holds powerful people accountable when the misconduct happens behind closed doors?
The IG report does not indicate whether investigators referred any findings for criminal prosecution. It does not name the Oregon strip club. And it does not resolve every detail of the relationship between Chavez-DeRemer and Sloan, only that the relationship, as documented, violated the rules she swore to uphold.
What the report does establish, through 44 pages of evidence, is that the nation's top labor official used her position to pressure a subordinate into an act he refused, maintained a relationship with her bodyguard that compromised impartiality standards, drank on federal property without authorization, mixed personal travel with official business, and oversaw an office that 38 of her own colleagues called toxic.
Conservatives rightly demand accountability from government officials who abuse public trust. That standard does not bend based on party affiliation, and it should not start now.
