On the morning of July 8, 2021, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo arrived in Washington state for a roundtable that evening with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) on the need to grow minority-owned small businesses. Earlier that day, before the panel discussion with the powerful Senate Commerce Committee chairwoman, Raimondo had a phone call with Madrona Ventures, a Seattle-based firm that invests in artificial intelligence, according to a copy of Raimondo’s calendar.
“Big impact,” Cantwell texted Raimondo on July 9, thanking the secretary of commerce for making the trek out west. The top Biden administration official asked Cantwell to remind her of a trail where the senator planned to go hiking in Arizona. Raimondo also told Cantwell she would “love to have dinner with you and my husband,” according to internal agency documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner, adding, “He works at a very cool artificial intelligence start up.”
“Hauvasupai falls,” Cantwell replied. “Dinner sounds great.”
This exchange and others between Raimondo and people connected to the AI space are at the heart of a new ethics complaint against Raimondo by Protect the Public’s Trust, a watchdog tracking alleged conflicts of interest. In the complaint, which was filed Tuesday afternoon with the Commerce Department’s inspector general, the nonprofit organization requested an investigation into Raimondo’s “seemingly improper” interactions about policy matters that could “affect the financial interests of her husband’s companies.”
Raimondo’s husband, Andy Moffit, is the chief business development officer at Sword Health, a healthcare company using AI technology, according to his LinkedIn account. Moffit, between 2020 and 2023, also worked at PathAI, a company reportedly funded by a venture capital firm linked to China’s government.
