The Republican National Convention, with its planned use of the White House as backdrop and speeches from administration officials, spurs outcry from ethics experts.
Conway, White House senior advisor Ivanka Trump, social media director Dan Scavino and other administration officialsat the four-day convention, raising questions about federal employees participating in partisan politicking.
Michael R. Pompeo plans to speak to the RNC while he is in Israel on an official mission, breaking the long-held tradition of secretaries of State avoiding partisan politics. “Pompeo’s decision to speak at the Republican National Convention while on official U.S. travel blurs the line between politics and government service,” Corey Goldstone, communications manager for the nonpartisan advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said in an email. “Steering clear of public political endorsements has worked to keep secretaries of State above the political fray in the past, so it feels like an important ethics precedent is being broken.
“Trump giving his convention speech on the South Lawn is the clearest conceivable violation of the Hatch Act,” Richard Stengel, a former Obama administration official, wrote on Twitter. “[Hundreds] of White House staffers would be violating it, not to mention charges of criminal appropriation of Congressional funds for political purposes.”
The Hatch Act is a 1939 federal law that restricts federal employees from participating in certain political activities. Although the law’s civil provisions do not apply to the president and vice president, they are not exempt from the law’s criminal provisions, Sherman said. Trump’s daughter and the other senior officials are subject to the Hatch Act’s civil statues, but the White House has defended their participation.
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