DOWN THE HATCH

Watchdog Says These Trump Cronies Illegally Campaigned in Office

Some of Trump’s highest Cabinet officials and White House aides showed a “willful disregard” for the Hatch Act, the watchdog said.

A rogue’s gallery of senior Trump officials have been found to have violated the Hatch Act, abusing their government roles by campaigning just days before the November election, according to a report from the Office of Special Counsel. The illegal promotion of Donald Trump’s re-election while on the government clock went unchecked, the withering 63-page federal probe found, and “created the conditions for what appeared to be a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus with the upper echelons of the executive branch.” At least 15 warning letters were sent to the Trump administration by the Office of Special Counsel, explicitly laying out the violations, the report noted.

The list of implicated senior Trump aides and officials included Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pompeo, Mark Meadows, Chad Wolf, and Stephen Miller. All showed a “willful disregard” for the Hatch Act, politicking in “especially pernicious” ways prior to the 2020 election. Most of them either violated the law by promoting Trump in media interviews, although Pompeo and Wolf were singled out for, respectively, changing State Department policy “to allow himself to speak” at a convention in Israel and leading a naturalization ceremony “orchestrated for the purpose of creating [campaign] content.”