The State Department official who embellished her resume and appeared with a fake TIME cover of herself has resigned

• Mina Chang, the State Department staffer who embellished significant portions of her resume and was seen with a fake TIME cover with her face on it, resigned on Monday.
• Chang wrote in her resignation letter, first obtained by Politico, that stepping down "is the only acceptable moral and ethical option for me at this time."
• Her letter took aim at top State Department brass for not defending her after NBC News published a bombshell investigation last week revealing Chang's dubious resume.
• Chang also touched on the declining culture within the State Department, writing that it is "experiencing what I and many believe is the worst and most profound moral crisis confronting career professionals and political appointees in the Department's history."
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Mina Chang, the State Department staffer who came under scrutiny last week for having embellished her resume, resigned on Monday, Politico reported.

"Resigning is the only acceptable moral and ethical option for me at this time," Chang wrote in her resignation letter, obtained by Politico. Her resignation is effective immediately.

Chang also touched on the declining culture within the State Department, writing that it is "experiencing what I and many believe is the worst and most profound moral crisis confronting career professionals and political appointees in the Department's history."

She continued: "Department morale is at its lowest, the professionalism and collegiality - once a hallmark of the US diplomatic service - has all but disappeared."

Chang slammed the State Department for not defending her after NBC News published a bombshell investigation last week revealing that she fabricated significant portions of her work history and educational background. The investigation also found that Chang appeared on a fake TIME magazine cover.

While she claimed to boast a degree from Harvard Business School, the university told NBC she had only attended a seven-week program at Harvard in 2016. And the Army War College program she claimed to have graduated from was just a four-day national security seminar, the college told NBC; in addition, she claimed to have attended a leadership course at Southern Methodist University, but the college told Business Insider they had no records she attended or paid course fees.

"A character assassination based solely on innuendo was launched against me attacking my credentials and character," she said in her resignation letter. "My superiors at the Department refused to defend me, stand up for the truth or allow me to answer the false charges against me."

Chang, who served as deputy secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, joined the Trump administration in April.

NBC's report said in the process of applying for the job, she "also invented a role on a UN panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress."

Following President Donald Trump's own lead, Chang took the extraordinary step of appearing in a video with a knockoff TIME magazine cover with her face on it, presented it at her job interviews, and discussed it in a 2017 video interview about her work as CEO of the non-profit Linking the World.

In addition to the fake TIME cover, NBC and BI found that Chang significantly misrepresented her educational and professional achievements on her LinkedIn profile.

In addition to discrepancies about Harvard and the US Army War College, NBC also found that the United Nations panel Chang said she attended was merely a public roundtable, and what she said were speaking engagements at the 2016 Democratic and Republican National Committees were instead completely unrelated appearances in the host cities of both conventions which happened to take place around the same time.

According to her educational history on LinkedIn, Chang wrote that she took part in a six-day "Executive Nonprofit Leadership" program at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

Business Insider's David Choi discovered that Chang's enrollment information is absent. Her basic information was found in the school's database, but it never received payment or course records on Chang, according to a course official.

The executive director of Chang's non-profit, however, defended Chang's record and called press reports a "hit job." He said Chang did not produce or commission the fake TIME cover and that alum of the 7-week Harvard Business School course were entitled to call themselves graduates.

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