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Richard Chalkey

Richard Chalkey served as deputy chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Mace from 2021 until his resignation in December 2023, and was named in the House Ethics Committee's 2026 OCC report as one of four individuals, alongside Mace, Dan Hanlon, and Lorie Khatod, who refused to cooperate with the reimbursement investigation and were recommended for subpoena.

Richard Cody J. Chalkey is a Republican government-affairs and legislative staffer who served as deputy chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC-1) during the 117th and 118th Congress, from early in her first term until his resignation in December 2023.

What happened

Before joining Mace's office, Chalkey spent four years in the Trump White House, serving as associate director of the National Economic Council and associate director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, where he worked on the rollout of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to a biography later published by the Premium Cigar Association. Earlier in his career he held staff positions in the offices of then-Sen. Mark Kirk and then-Rep. Rodney Davis, both of Illinois.

Christmas Eve 2022 incident. According to Slate's Jim Newell ("The Unraveling of Nancy Mace," June 10, 2024), after a communications staffer in Mace's office ran afoul of her eight-minute response-time rule on Christmas Eve 2022, Mace pressed then-chief of staff Dan Hanlon to fire him. When Hanlon declined, Mace turned to her deputy chief of staff; "Chalkey also refused."

December 2023 resignation. On approximately December 1, 2023, Mace fired Hanlon. The same week, Chalkey resigned as deputy chief of staff and legislative director Randal Meyer announced he would leave at month's end, the Washington Examiner's Reese Gorman reported on December 5, 2023. All three were, in the Examiner's account, four-year veterans of the Trump administration. The departures were part of a larger exodus: by February 2024, The Daily Beast reported that all nine staffers in Mace's Washington office as of November 1, 2023 had left, eight by resignation and one (Hanlon) by firing. See Staff Turnover in Nancy Mace's Office for the full record.

After Mace's office. Chalkey was named Director of Coalitions and Policy at the Premium Cigar Association in April 2024, according to the trade group and Tobacco Reporter. He later returned to the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president in the Office of Legislative Affairs (from February 2025, per LegiStorm), where he worked on the legislative package that became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and in May 2026 joined the government-relations firm Farragut Partners LLP as a partner, according to the firm's own announcement.

House Ethics Committee, OCC reimbursement review

Chalkey is named in the OCC Report on Review No. 25-5681, publicly released by the House Ethics Committee on March 2, 2026. The report states at ¶12 and ¶34: "The following individuals and entities refused to cooperate with the OCC's review: Rep. Mace; Daniel Hanlon; Lorie Khatod; and Richard Chalkey." At ¶35, the OCC Board recommended that the Ethics Committee issue subpoenas to all four. See the House Ethics Investigation hub and the full OCC report for the document itself.

Refusing to cooperate with an OCC review is not itself a finding of wrongdoing. No Ethics Committee finding of a violation has been issued against Chalkey, and he has not made public statements about the OCC review, based on sources reviewed.

Sources

See also