Ex-Trump Labor Secretary Went to Strip Club on Taxpayers’ Dime

Lori Chavez-DeRemer also pressured her staff to drink on the job with her, an inspector general report found.

Malcolm Ferguson/

September 4, 2026

Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

A Thursday report from the Inspector General states that former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer went to a strip club while on the job, even forcing her driver to rain dollar bills on one of the dancers.

The report further details just how sloppy and reckless Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure as Labor secretary was until she stepped down in April.

“During Chavez-DeRemer’s April 15–20, 2025 personal travel to Oregon, she requested an off-the-record stop at an establishment that was determined upon entry to feature partially nude dancers,” the IG report reads, noting that Chavez-DeRemer made a point to bring her limousine driver inside with her.

“Chavez-DeRemer subsequently took money from her purse, gave the money to the driver, and directed him to give it to the performer. When the agent resisted and sought guidance from [Assistant Special Agent in Charge]1, ASAIC 1 instructed him to comply with Chavez-DeRemer’s requests,” the report continues. “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 again hesitated and sought intervention from ASAIC 1, who told him to follow Chavez-DeRemer’s instructions. The agent complied against his wishes.”

This is the woman President Donald Trump handpicked—at the behest of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien—to lead the country’s Labor Department as part of a so-called “pro-labor” administration. And that strip club moment is just one of many ways in which she created what the IG report describes as a “toxic, intimidating, and humiliating” work environment.

The report also notes that while in Michigan, Chavez-DeRemer massaged ASAIC 1’s shoulders “while seated behind him in a vehicle after he completed a driving shift,” and asked if he was tired. ASAIC 1 told her he was “solid as a rock,” which witnesses interpreted as a sexual innuendo in reference to a massage-induced erection.

Chavez-DeRemer also reportedly discussed employees’ performance in front of them, including whether they had cried, and would drink during the workday. She and her aides would pressure other employees to join them and would mock them if they declined, witnesses said.

The dysfunction wasn’t just from Chavez-DeRemer. Her chief of staff Rebecca Wright screened Office of the Secretary applicants by race, weight, and sexual orientation—even moving someone’s desk because she didn’t want a “fat person” in her line of sight. She also told women in the office not to cut their hair too short to stop them from “turning into a lesbian.”

This is an update from the April allegations that led to Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation—that she had an affair with a member of her security detail, asked staffers to buy alcohol for her at various hours of the day, and used taxpayer funds to throw a birthday party for herself.

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