MINA CHANG, a high-ranking U.S. State Department staffer who vaulted into the public spotlight after NBC reported she had inflated her resume, has resigned from her position.

Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, was accused of overstating her academic credentials and creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it. Chang has rebutted NBC’s story, arguing that her academic statements were not misleading and that she did not commission the doctored Time cover.

“Resigning is the only acceptable moral and ethical option for me at this time,” Chang, a Korean-American, wrote in her resignation letter Monday.

The letter decries the current culture at the State Department, a subject that has featured prominently during the House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has received criticism for not adequately protecting the career diplomats enmeshed in the impeachment inquiry. President Donald Trump has branded several of them as “never Trumpers.”

NBC reported last week that Chang had misleadingly claimed in her official bio that she was an “alumna” of Harvard Business School when in fact she only attended a seven-week course there. It also reported that Chang had even created a fake Time magazine cover featuring her own image.

In her rebuttal, Chang notes that she never claimed to have earned a degree from Harvard. A Harvard Business School spokesperson told NBC that the school lets people who attend certain executive education programs claim “alumni status,” even if they didn’t get a degree.

Chang’s rebuttal also says the Time cover originated when a friend of hers commissioned an artist, Pierre-Yves Daygot, to create “a piece with her on a Time Magazine cover.” The friend acted without telling Chang.

After that, the rebuttal says, “an enthusiastic fan online went one step further and used an app to make a fake magazine cover with Ms. Chang’s actual image superimposed on the cover.”

The rebuttal also says that Chang didn’t give any permission or have any knowledge that the fake cover would be used during a public access TV interview for Houston Community College.

Chang joined the State Department in late April and was later nominated for a job at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she would have overseen a budget of more than US$1 billion and the development agency’s work in Asia.

(SD-Agencies)