Is Angela Chao, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law who drowned in a fatal car accident in February 2024, listed as the CEO of the company that owns the ship that hit Baltimore's Key Bridge on March 26, 2024? No, that's not true: Chao is listed as the chair and CEO of Foremost Group, an American shipping company headquartered in New York. The container ship, Dali, that crashed into the bridge, is owned by Singapore-based Ocean Grace.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X (formerly Twitter) by Lori Allen on March 26, 2024. The post's caption said:
McConnel's sister in law that recently drowned in a Tesla is listed as the CEO of the company that owns the ship that hit the bridge.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Mar 27 14:25:02 2024 UTC)
Grok
The social media post appeared to be quoting Grok, X's AI chatbot. In the screenshot included, Grok purportedly said:
It appears that the container ship DALI is owned by the company Foremost Group, which has Angela Chao listed as its CEO on its website
The virtual assistant debuted on November 3, 2023, and was only available to premium subscribers (archived here) at the time this fact check was written. Grok's website (archived here) promises that:
Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don't use it if you hate humor!
A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the π platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.
Grok is still a very early beta product - the best we could do with 2 months of training - so expect it to improve rapidly with each passing week with your help.
Because Grok gets its information from the "π platform," it's susceptible to whatever is circulating there -- whether true or false, accurate or inaccurate.
Angela Chao
It is true that Chao, the sister of McConnell's wife Elaine Chao, was the chair and CEO of Foremost Group, the company's website says. But Foremost Group does not own the ship that crashed (archived here) into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Dali, the container ship involved in the incident, is owned by Grace Ocean (archived here) and managed by Synergy Group.
Angela Chao (archived here) drowned in a fatal car accident (archived here) involving a Tesla in Texas on February 11, 2024.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks involving claims around the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore can be found here.
