President Trump’s incoming EPA pick admitted wearing sunglasses and a fake nose to help her daughter pass her driving test, it was reported.
Cathy Stepp, 54, who headed the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, donned the disguise and followed another driver taking the 2011 Wisconsin exam so daughter Hannah, now 23, could rehearse it later, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“I failed my first driving test,” Hannah told the outlet, repeating the story she told her mother’s staff earlier this month. “My mom said, ‘You’re not going to fail it again!’”
“She put on a disguise of a fake nose and sunglasses and went to the DMV and followed someone taking the driving portion of the test so that she could learn the route, and then we practiced it,” she said. “I didn’t fail the second time!”
The story, which emerged Friday, was initially told as a favor by Hannah to her mom in an effort to humanize the new Midwest EPA chief, the Tribune said.
However, not everyone thought the nosing around was funny.
“It was baffling,” one anonymous staffer said, according to the Tribune. “For a public official’s daughter to admit that in front of her entire staff? It’s unethical … and then, did she help put someone unsafe on the roads?”
Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation won’t ask Hannah to retake the test, and said it doesn’t have an opinion on the matter, the paper said.
Even though the spying is ancient history, she has kept the nose to this day, the Tribune said.