The Office of Special Counsel determined Thursday that White House senior aide Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act and is “recommending her removal from federal service.”
The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees working in the executive branch– minus the president and vice president – from wading in divisive political waters and using their position to overtly engage in political campaign activities.
On Thursday, the Office of the Special Counsel labeled Conway a “repeat offender” of the Hatch Act and recommended her “removal from federal service.”
Conway found herself under fire for remarks she made about then-Alabama senate candidate Doug Jones in November 2017. She described him as “weak on crime” and “terrible for property owners” during an appearance on Fox and Friends. However, she did not explicitly state support for Jones’ challenger, Roy Moore.
“I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through,” she said at the time.
Conway also experienced backlash after weighing in on the Democratic 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden, mentioning his record on immigration and other issues.
“I’m going to talk about people’s records because I have the right to,” Conway said, according to the Hill. “I’m not concerned about Joe Biden.”
Supporters of Conway argue that she is not going out of her way to influence political campaign activities. Rather, she is acting as a spokeswoman and defending President Trump and the administration as a whole by correcting the record from a range of misleading anti-Trump reports.
Rumblings of Conway’s potential Hatch Act violations have been brewing for months. Conway addressed the reports in May, telling a reporter, “If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work.”
Read the OSC’s full report:
Story cited here.
