A diplomat with the US Department of State (DOS) was terminated from his role on Wednesday for a relationship with a woman involved in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The discovery was made by a James O’Keefe operation first posted in August, where Choi was found on the dating app Hinge and went on a date with an O’Keefe undercover reporter. Daniel Choi, a foreign service officer, was caught making several statements revealing his relationship and his insouciance toward government policy forbidding it.
“I was supposed to, whatever, sort of report what I knew about her, but I always thought that was kind of unfair,” Choi said.
“Her dad was either a provincial or a federal minister of education. So he’s, like, straight up Communist Party,” Choi said of his girlfriend’s background. He even suggested she may possibly be a spy. Before his trip to various Asian countries was over, the relationship ended with the two agreeing to be friends.
DOS spokesperson Tommy Pigott told The Associated Press about how the department handled the situation.
“[T]he diplomat in question was dismissed from the foreign service after President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio reviewed the case and determined that he had ‘admitted concealing a romantic relationship with a Chinese national with known ties to the Chinese Communist Party’,” Pigott stated. “Under Secretary Rubio’s leadership, we will maintain a zero-tolerance policy for any employee who is caught undermining our country’s national security.”
According to the Washington Examiner, prior to Choi, the termination of a government employee for this sort of relationship, though illegal, had yet to be enforced.
In similar news, the DOS announced this spring that it will revoke the visas of any Chinese students associated with the CCP.
