US State Dept official resigns over inflated resume scandal

Washington: A senior US State Department official, who had reportedly inflated her resume, has resigned from her position.

Mina Chang, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, submitted her resignation letter on Monday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reports Xinhua news agency.

"Resigning is the only acceptable moral and ethical option for me at this time," Chang wrote in the letter, according to the US news outlet POLITICO.

She also decried the current culture at the State Department, which did not defend her.

NBC News reported last week that Chang had inflated her achievements in education and overstated her experiences.

Chang claimed to be a graduate of Harvard Business School, while the varsity said she only completed a seven-week course in 2016 and held no degree.

She also said she was a graduate of a programme at the US Army War College in the state of Pennsylvania, but she just attended a four-day seminar there.

Chang said she addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 2016, but NBC reported that she spoke at separate events held in the same cities during the same time period.

Chang was twice nominated by President Donald Trump's administration to serve as an assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development, but her nomination was withdrawn in September after the Senate requested more documents supporting her work in the past.