November 20th 2019

By Dan Desai Martin

American Independent

A week after NBC News exposed her inflated qualifications — which included a fake TIME magazine cover — Mina Chang resigned on Monday from a top position at the State Department.

Chang served as the deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, a job that came with a six-figure salary. In her resignation letter, first reported by Politico, Chang claimed she was leaving after a “character assassination” and complained that State Department officials “refused to defend me, stand up for the truth or allow me to answer the false charges against me.” Chang denied the NBC News allegations of embellishing her resume.

Chang attacked the “toxic environment” within the State Department, claiming the department is facing the “worst and most profound moral crisis confronting career professionals and political appointees in the Department’s history.”

Chang worked at the State Department for seven months before resigning.

Prior to her plum job in the Trump administration, Chang had no diplomatic experience. On her resume, she “invented a role on a U.N. panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress,” according to NBC. She addressed neither the Democratic nor Republican conventions, and there is no evidence she has testified before Congress, according to NBC.

Her resume also suggested she had obtained degrees from both Harvard Business School and the Army War College. In reality, she attended a seven-week course at Harvard Business School and a four-day seminar at the Army War College, according to NBC.

In addition, Chang also promoted herself using a fake Time magazine cover with the words “We change the world: Modern humanitarian in the digital age.” A video containing the fake cover was used on the website of the nonprofit organization Chang ran in 2017.

NBC reported that her nonprofit organization lost its tax-exempt status in 2019 after failing to file the appropriate paperwork with the IRS for the past three years.

Chang is not the first Trump appointee embroiled in a scandal involving embellished claims. In August, Trump was forced to withdraw the nomination of Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) for director of national intelligence after Ratcliffe was caught inflating his qualifications.

After Ratcliffe was nominated, an ABC News investigation discovered Ratcliffe had falsely stated that he “convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization.” In fact,  the case file he refers to does not mention his name, nor do officials who actually worked on the case remember him being involved in it.

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