Senior administration official resigns after report of false resume

Senior State Department official Mina Chang resigned as deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations following a report that she'd falsified her resume, NBC first reported Monday. She denies the claim.

Catch up quick: NBC reported last week that Chang had inflated her resume, including that she implied she'd testified to Congress, invented a role on a United Nation panel and claimed she'd addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

• Chang had also posted a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it, it said.
• She'd been up for consideration for a larger role, "one with a budget of more than $1 billion, until Congress started asking questions about her resume," NBC notes.

What she's saying: In her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, obtained by NBC and Politico, Chang wrote that her superiors "refused" to defend her, "stand up for the truth or allow me to answer the false charges against me."

• Chang said she feels she's been "unfairly maligned, unprotected by my superiors, and exposed to a media with an insatiable desire for gossip and scandal, genuine or otherwise."

"It is essential that my resignation be seen as a protest and not as surrender because I will not surrender my commitment to serve, my fidelity to the truth, or my love of country."

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