White House counselor Kellyanne Conway will not appear before the House Oversight Committee to discuss her alleged multiple violations of the Hatch Act.
According to CNN, White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., that “the precedent for members of the White House staff to decline invitations to testify before congressional committees has been consistently adhered to by administrations of both political parties and is based on clearly established constitutional doctrines.”
Cummings did not respond positively to Cipollone’s letter.
“We cannot have people disobeying the law. The president is not above the law, and neither is Ms. Conway above the law,” Cummings said in response to Cipollone’s letter.
Asked if Conway would be held in contempt for not appearing before Congress, Cummings replied, “Of course.”
This is not the first time that a high-ranking member of the Trump administration has flat-out refused to appear before Congress. Attorney General William Barr incurred controversy for his own decision to disregard a congressional subpoena.
Conway also is not the first White House staffer to be accused of violating the Hatch Act. Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the president and his eldest daughter, was accused of violating the Hatch Act last week by the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
In a complaint filed with the Office of Special Counsel, executive director Noah Bookbinder wrote that “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (‘CREW’) respectfully requests that the Office of Special Counsel (‘OSC’) investigate whether assistant to the president Ivanka Trump violated the Hatch Act by using her social media account @IvankaTrump to post messages, including President Trump’s campaign slogan: ‘Make America Great Again.'”
He added, “These actions were directed specifically toward the success or failure of Donald J. Trump, a candidate in a partisan election. By sharing these posts on a Twitter account that Ms. Trump uses for official government business, Ms. Trump engaged in political activity prohibited by law.”
Conway has come under fire for allegedly using her official White House position to criticize Democrats. Her targets have ranged from a candidate in a key Senate race to a prospective opponent for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
“She did it before, she got away with it when she trashed Doug Jones, and goes to the exact same spot trashing Joe Biden,” Richard Painter, a chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told Newsweek last month.
He later added, “The presumptive punishment is firing. They should have fired her the first time. If President Trump will not remove White House officials who are clearly violating the law, he’s not doing his job and this would be yet another grounds for Congress considering impeaching and removing the president.”
Conway’s comment about Biden was that his speech on health care reform did not “make sense” and that “28 million Americans have no health insurance — none — nine years after Obama and Biden crowed about their health insurance plan. Why is that? Why have the Democrats all moved on from Obamacare into Medicare for All? And, in fact, does that include Joe Biden? Is Joe Biden not endorsing Obamacare the way Obama’s not endorsing Joe Biden? I wonder.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy