Ivanka Trump’s 2020 tweet violated Hatch Act, watchdog says
Ivanka Trump has been accused of violating the Hatch Act, which bans government workers from speaking out on political campaign issues, over tweets she wrote before her father’s 2020 presidential campaign launch.
Related: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made as much as $135m last year
The influential Washington-based watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) has filed a complaint against Donald Trump’s daughter, a senior presidential aide who works in the White House as an adviser, albeit unsalaried.
In a letter to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), part of the Department of Justice, Crew said her tweet, posted on Father’s Day last weekend, just a few days before Trump’s re-election campaign launch in Florida, included his 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” and claimed “the best is yet to come”.
Four years ago today, I introduced my father @realDonaldTrump when he launched a Campaign that would forever change America.
Because of his courage, Americans are safer and more prosperous...and the best is yet to come!
Happy Father’s Day! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ygcbg3URQx— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) June 16, 2019
The organisation also claimed she had used her government Twitter account, which has more than 6.5 million followers and on which she describes herself as “adviser to Potus” to share “multiple partisan political posts” since March last year.
Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Crew, said: “It has become clear that this rampant abuse of public office is not a problem of one bad apple but rather a key feature of the Trump White House.”
He said: “By blatantly using her office for politics right after the Office of Special Counsel recommended her colleague be fired for repeatedly acting similarly, Ivanka Trump has basically thumbed her nose at the OSC and the rule of law. Never before have we witnessed this level of illegal politicized behaviour, and it must not be allowed to continue.”
The “colleague” refers to Kellyanne Conway, who serves as a counselor to the president.
The complaint comes just a week after the OSC called on the president to fire Conway over multiple violations of the Hatch Act.
The OSC criticized Conway in a report addressed to Trump as a “repeat offender” of the Act and claimed she had “shown disregard for the law”.
