Filing says 13 ex-aides mixed jobs, broke law

At least 13 senior Trump administration officials illegally mixed governing with campaigning before the 2020 election, intentionally ignoring a law that prohibits merging the two and getting approval to break it, a federal investigation released Tuesday found.

A report from the Office of Special Counsel Henry Kerner describes a “willful disregard for the law” known as the Hatch Act that was “especially pernicious,” given that many officials abused their government roles days before the November election. Former President Donald Trump — whose job it was to discipline his political appointees — allowed them to illegally promote his reelection on the job despite warnings to some from ethics officials, the report says.

“This failure to impose discipline created the conditions for what appeared to be a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch,” investigators wrote in the scathing 60-page report.

“The president’s refusal to require compliance with the law laid the foundation for the violations,” the report says. “In each of these instances, senior administration officials used their official authority or influence to campaign for President Trump. Based upon the Trump administration’s reaction to the violations, OSC [Office of Special Counsel] concludes that the most logical inference is that the administration approved of these taxpayer-funded campaign activities.”

The special counsel found that two Cabinet officials, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf, broke the law when Pompeo gave a speech from Israel and Wolf led a taped naturalization ceremony for newly minted citizens on White House grounds, both during the Republican National Convention.

The investigation was prompted by an unprecedented swell of complaints to the independent agency that enforces the Hatch Act after Trump’s decision during the coronavirus pandemic to hold the convention at the White House. The probe started when Trump was still president.

But the report concluded that while the Hatch Act bars most federal employees — excluding the president and vice president — from politicking while on duty or in a federal office, it does not impose similar restrictions on others who were, in this case, hosting, organizing or attending the convention.

The Office of Special Counsel, led by a Republican appointed by Trump, lays out a series of violations that the authors underscore were not innocent mistakes or slips of the tongue.

No punishment is expected to be assessed because, by most legal interpretations, the president in office at the time is the only person who can take action to fire or reprimand his political appointees when they act illegally. The office’s lengthy treatment of how the administration flouted a law intended to ensure that civil servants and political appointees operate free of political influence was meant to illustrate that the law lacks teeth and needs stronger enforcement mechanisms, the report says.

“OSC is issuing this report to educate employees about Hatch Act-prohibited activities, highlight the enforcement challenges that [the office] confronted during its investigations, and deter similar violations in the future,” investigators wrote.

The political appointees who violated the law by blatantly promoting Trump’s reelection or disparaging then-candidate Joe Biden in media interviews were Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette; senior counselor Kellyanne Conway; White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah; U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman; senior adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-inlaw; press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; senior adviser Stephen Miller; deputy White House press secretary Brian Morgenstern; Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence; and national security adviser Robert O’Brien.