The watchdog group that filed a successful complaint against White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for violating the Hatch Act is protesting again, saying she and her deputy, Andrew Bates, have “doubled down.”
As Breitbrt News reported earlier this week, Jean-Pierre received a letter of warning from the Office of the Special Counsel (an independent agency not to be confused with the Special Counsel within the Department of Justice). The letter cited a complaint from Protect the Public’s Trust, a watchdog group focused on ethics in the federal government, and warned Jean-Pierre about her repeated use of the phrase “MAGA Republicans.”
A sullen Jean-Pierre appeared to dispute the findings of the Office of the Special Counsel when asked about the letter by reporters earlier this week, and said that the White House counsel’s office would be responding.
But Protect the Public Trust has filed another complaint against Jean-Pierre and Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, saying that they continue to use the phrase “MAGA Republicans” despite the warning.
In a statement, Protect the Public’s Trust said:
In the 2022 violations, Ms. Jean-Pierre repeatedly used the phrase “MAGA Republicans” while disparaging those candidates, and “OSC concluded that the timing, frequency, and content of Ms. Jean-Pierre’s references to ‘MAGA Republicans’ established that she made those references to generate opposition to Republican candidates.” Accordingly, “Ms. Jean-Pierre violated the Hatch Act,” which prohibits using official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election. OSC warned, “that should she again engage in prohibited political activity, OSC would consider it a knowing and willful violation of the law that could result in OSC pursuing disciplinary action.” OSC simultaneously issued guidance to agency officials that “federal employees should not use ‘MAGA’ or ‘Make America Great Again’ while on duty.”
Yet on June 14, 2023, Ms. Jean-Pierre issued a statement that disparaged Congressional Republicans’ budget proposals by repeatedly using the term “MAGA.” Worse, Axios.com reported that also on June 14, “Andrew Bates [Jean-Pierre’s subordinate] wrote in a memo that Republicans’ ‘main economic agenda item’ is ‘MAGA tax welfare for the richest Americans and giant corporations …’” These violations come one week after the OSC guidance to federal employees clearly prohibiting use of the campaign slogan while on official duty and days after a media firestorm highlighting the controversial press secretary’s violation.
The actions of both officials appear to be the result of a deliberate, and possibly coordinated, decision to flout OSC’s guidance and OSC’s ability to speak with any authority on the Hatch Act. It also appears to escalate a growing feud between the White House lawyers and OSC staff over what standards apply to White House officials’ conduct and who the ultimate arbiter is over the Hatch Act.
Protect the Public Trust Director Michael Chamberlain added: “This was a political temper tantrum. These statements appear to be nothing less than a deliberate thumb in the eye to OSC and a clear indication that White House Press Office personnel don’t believe the rules apply to them. There should not be a two-tiered system of government ethics that subjects prominent White House Officials to a lower standard of scrutiny than other average public servants.”
Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates (R) speaks as Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young (C) and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse (L) listen during a press briefing in the Brady Room of the White House in Washington, DC on March 28, 2022. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
Bates was notorious for his profane posts on social media prior to the election, and for falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump had held a Bible upside-down in front of a church that had been set on fire by Black Lives Matter rioters outside the White House in late May 2020.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
