An independent watchdog group wrote Thursday to the Commerce Department’s inspector general, urging an investigation into Secretary Gina Raimondo over alleged ethics violations and a failure to recuse herself from policies that may impact her husband’s business.
This is the second complaint about Raimondo referred to the acting Inspector General Jill Baisinger at the agency by Protect the Public’s Trust, an independent watchdog group focusing on upholding the ethics responsibilities of elected and unelected officials.
Earlier this summer, PPT submitted a complaint warning that Raimondo appears to have disregarded “her obligations to recuse from certain matters and policy issues” related to “medical software and artificial intelligence (AI) in the healthcare industry” because her husband, Andy Moffit works for PathAI as the chief people officer. PathAI is a company that seeks to use AI to improve laboratories.
“Additional documents reviewed since the filing of that complaint disclose further potential violations of the Secretary’s ethics obligations. Once again, the record discloses that Secretary Raimondo appears to have been involved in matters that could directly benefit the financial interests of PathAI (and therefore the interests of her husband and her),” PPT asserted in its letter, shared with Just the News.
You can read the supplemental complaint below:
The documents uncovered by the watchdog group show Raimondo participated in a dinner that included an investor in PathAI where emails suggest the dinner included policy discussions while several “healthcare IT” and “digital healthcare” executives were listed as proposed guest. Included among the list of potential guests was PathAI CEO Andy Beck.
PPT says Raimondo’s participation in this dinner may have violated an ethics recusal the secretary signed, especially if Beck was in attendance. When she became the head of the Commerce Department, Raimondo signed a Disqualification Statement which prohibited her from engaging with “any matter that affects PathAl.”
“This recusal will apply not only to matters in which the company itself is a party before the Commerce Department — which is not likely to happen — but also a policy issue that affects a group that includes PathAl,” a draft ethics briefing prepared for the secretary reads, according to PPT.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
“Secretary Raimondo signed a disqualification statement agreeing to avoid involving herself in certain matters that could affect her husband’s company or related industry sectors or groups. Then, by all appearances, she engaged in that very behavior. She took meetings with executives in the industry, even those with close ties to the firm, and bragged about the ‘very cool artificial intelligence start up’ her husband was involved in while trying to set up a meeting with the head of the Senate committee that oversees AI,” Director of PPT Michael Chamberlain told Just the News.
“This is hardly the type of conduct the American public should expect from the self-proclaimed most ethical administration in history,” he continued.
