WASHINGTON - The Trump administration pushed back Wednesday against widespread criticism that its staging and filming of events at the White House used as programming for the Republican convention was illegal - dismissing arguments that it had violated the Hatch Act, a law intended to prevent the use of public power for private political gain.
During the convention, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Jerusalem, in an apparent violation of separate State Department rules, and the first lady, Melania Trump, delivered a speech from the Rose Garden. That law, enacted in 1939 and revised several times, imposes civil and criminal prohibitions aimed at barring officials from using their official powers to commandeer public resources for partisan political activities.
"The president has erased these principled lines of separation between the political and governmental functions of executive officials." "The pardon and naturalisation ceremonies appear to be brazen violations of the criminal provisions of the Hatch Act," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St Louis who specialises in government ethics.
"It doesn't matter if you post it first - it's your intent that matters," he said, adding that the events on display at the Republican convention were"a combination of exploiting a loophole in the fact that the president is not covered, but brazen lawbreaking by his subordinates - in particular, Chad Wolf, which was an obvious and open violation."
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)
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