Hillbuzz Blue Team Action Alert: Does White House Propaganda Job Violate Hatch Act and/or FEC Regulations?
H/T IOwnTheWorld.com
As a one-time civil servant, I am well aware of the local and State laws that are intended to prevent government employees from doing electioneering and/or partisan work while on the clock.
So I was stunned to read that the White House — not the Democrat National Committee or Obama’s campaign organization — had hired a civil servant to “squash negative stories” about The Messiah, Our Dear Leader, in “a more aggressive defense of the president and his policies as his re-election campaign gears up,” according to the Huffington Post.
Notice, the descriptions of this new position* don’t refer to the “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response” in terms of correcting inaccuracies (i.e. “fact checking”) but in terms of deleting opposition speech (i.e. “reality checking” and “liberty checking.”)
In other words, the position of “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response” is entirely partisan and election-related.
The White House’s new Troll In Chief, Jesse Lee, launched his official government twitter account with the photo of the killer robot you see above (which would also kind of be a copyright violation, wouldn’t it? When used for official government business, as opposed to “fair use” in satire?)
With just a little Googling, I managed to find references to The Hatch Act, which regulates election activities by government employees on the Federal level.
Here’s the language from the official form you use to report violations of the Hatch Act:
The Hatch Act prohibits federal, District of Columbia, some state and local and nonprofit organization employees from
engaging in certain types of political activities. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321- 7326 and 5 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1508.Federal Employees are generally prohibited from:
1. Using their official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.
2. Soliciting, accepting, or receiving political contributions (with some exceptions).
3. Running for nomination or as candidates for partisan political office.
4. Soliciting or discouraging the participation in political activity of any person who has business before their
employing agency.
5. Engaging in political activity while on duty, in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties,
while wearing a uniform or official insignia, or while using a vehicle owned or leased by the United States
government.
Now, I’m not a lawyer. But I do know that Hillbuzz is read by thousands of people in the Washington, DC area, where lawyers (especially election lawyers) are thick on the ground.
So someone out there can explain to us whether Jesse Lee’s new gig is a violation of the Hatch Act and/or Federal election laws.
Report Hatch Act Violations
And if it is, please feel free to submit your findings on this official form from the Office of Special Counsel.
Blue Team: Activate!
*Apparently the only job ever actually “saved or created” by the Obama administration, according to a commenter on TwitPic, which made us LOL.
© 2011, Kathleen Gee. All rights reserved.
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If this is a violation of federal election law then I sincerely hope that this can be used to keep Obama off the 2012 ticket. He's ruthlessly used lawyers to disqualify past opponents so I think it's only fair if we do the same to him.
A bit off topic, but here's another troubling legal development, this one in WI. Judge "so sue me" Sumi (her son was a union operative) has thrown out the budget reform bill on which GOP Gov. Scott Walker and the WI legislature worked so diligently and tirelessly for many months to save their state from bankruptcy and infuse new life into their state economy. The decision, supposedly based on a technicality in the "open meetings" rule, is absolutely without bona fide foundation. This one is clamoring to be an action item. H/T Legal Insurrection http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/05/jud…