Embattled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer reportedly instructed staffers to “pay attention” to strange personal text messages they would receive from her husband and father.
“Hearing u/r in town. Wishin U would let me know. I could made some excuses to get out an show u around. Please keep this private,” reads one message the labor secretary’s father, Richard Chavez, sent a staffer last April that was obtained by The Post.
“Will do, no need to worry!” the staffer replied, adding, “And yes I have been. So sorry I didn’t reach out I should have.”
The staffer noted they were heading “back to DC” after “a crazy two days” but would “be back.”
“When are u leaving an where u staying,” Chavez responded.
The New York Times first reported on the messages Wednesday.
The exchange is one of several text conversations between Chavez-DeRemer, her top aides, family members and employees that are now being scrutinized by the department’s inspector general, as part of a broader probe of alleged misconduct.
Chavez-DeRemer’s father, who lives in Oregon, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
The same staff member he asked to visit with, identified as a young woman by the Times, sent the labor secretary’s husband, Shawn DeRemer, a text a few weeks later, apologizing for not being in touch.
“I’ve been having so much fun traveling with LCD and being in the moment for everything!! I promise from now on I’ll check in,” the staffer wrote, according to the outlet.
DeRemer responded: “You better. I was feeling forgotten. I figured you were still in church repenting after your exposure to the demon state of Oregon.”
DeRemer, an Oregon-based anesthesiologist, was investigated by Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department earlier this year for an alleged sexual assault against a Labor Department staff member that took place at the department’s DC headquarters.
No charges were filed against DeRemer, but he was barred from the building after the alleged incident.
Several women have told the inspector general’s investigators that DeRemer had made unwanted advances at them, the Times reported.
DeRemer’s attorney James Bell did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Bell previously said that his client “categorically, unequivocally, and emphatically denies each and every one of the allegations.”
Texts reviewed by the outlet also showed Chavez-DeRemer and her former deputy chief of staff asked employees to bring them alcohol during work trips, sometimes in the middle of the workday.
“Do they sell by the bottle,” Chavez-DeRemer asked a staff member last July, in an apparent inquiry about the availability of rosé at a hotel bar in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the labor secretary was on an official visit.
“How about the josh sauvi B,” the labor secretary reportedly responded after being told the bar was out of rosé.
In another message from last September – sent just before 3 p.m. – Chavez-DeRemer’s then-deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright asked a staffer to pick up “a bottle or 2” of wine or champagne.
“Lori wants to do a toast when this meeting is over,” Wright explained.
In January, The Post first reported that Chavez-DeRemer was under investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General over allegations she abused her position by pursuing an “inappropriate” relationship with a member of her security detail; drank in her office while on the job; and committed “travel fraud” by having her top aides “make up” official trips to destinations where she could spend time with family or friends on the taxpayers’ dime.
The monthslong investigation is in its final stages and revealed “deep frustration” within the department about Chavez-DeRemer from staffers “across the political spectrum,” according to the Times.
Thus far, four Chavez-DeRemer aides – her former chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, director of advance and a member of her security detail with whom she was accused of having an affair – have been forced out of the department amid the IG probe.
At least three staff members have also filed Equal Employment Opportunity complaints against Chavez-DeRemer, alleging that she engaged in workplace discrimination and created a hostile environment.
The Labor Department did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
